The Tennessee Titans' problem is obvious. The solution? Not so much | Estes

CLEVELAND — When it mercifully ended, Mike Vrabel was among the first into the tunnel. He posted up outside the locker room, greeting each Tennessee Titans player with the same hopeful message:

It’s a long season.

Which was true. A defeat in Week 3, no matter how hideous, isn’t a deal-breaker. The Titans must take comfort in that sip of positivity, because nothing else here was easy to stomach.

The Cleveland Browns didn’t just beat the Titans 27-3. They dominated them. They humbled them physically on one side of the ball and simply wore them down on the other with a 17-minute gap in possession time. Offensively, nothing worked. The Titans mustered a historically pitiful 94 yards and six first downs. Ryan Tannehill was sacked five times. Derrick Henry got 20 rushing yards, his fewest in any game since Vrabel became coach in 2018.

When you can’t run or pass, guess what happens?

“We got whooped,” safety Kevin Byard said. “ . . . We just have to find a way and find out what type of team we are and how we need to go win games. As of right now, we haven't figured that out. But that's the beauty of still having another game next week.”

“We're going to compete, just like we have for a lot of years — and get written off or . . . ” Vrabel said, stopping himself before rolling on a tangent. “This isn't some kind of motivational speech. This is what happens in this league.”

Vrabel’s faith isn’t without reason. His teams have bounced back before. Three weeks and a 1-2 start isn’t enough of a sample size for a verdict, but it is enough to make some honest assessments.

These Titans have an above-average defense with some formidable skill players on offense and a still-serviceable quarterback when he has time to operate.

But — and this is important — they are no longer the Titans of previous seasons under Vrabel, a gritty, hard-nosed team that’ll smash an opponent into submission with Henry. Those days are long gone, along with Taylor Lewan and and Rodger Saffold and Ben Jones and Nate Davis — good, tough, proven linemen who are sorely missed by an offense that's searching for an identity because it can’t do what it wants without them.

Other defenses won’t have a Myles Garrett and a coordinator in Jim Schwartz, who spent the past two seasons working for the Titans, meaning he knew exactly which buttons to push.

Every defense will have good players, though, and it's not like Sunday was an outlier. The Titans haven’t scored a touchdown in two of three games. Tannehill has been sacked 13 times. Henry is averaging 3.2 yards per carry and hasn’t had a run longer than 23 yards.

The offensive line is the problem. It’s obvious.

And I’m not sure how correctable a problem it'll be.

This O-line just isn't good enough. It struggled throughout training camp, and it's struggling now.

The Titans have been learning the hard way that a franchise can’t withstand massive turnover on the offensive line, go cheap on replacements and then have everything continue to run smoothly. Not the way they want to play. Not with a ground-and-pound approach built for play-action passes.

Is there a fix? I’d be tempted to excuse it as a lack of cohesion up front, given all of the new faces, but . . .

“It's Week 3. There's no more excuses,” right guard Daniel Brunskill said. “I mean, Week 1, you can maybe say (that). Week 3? No. We've got to be better. We've got to come together. We've got to find a way to make sure we get all on the same page.”

Yes, it’ll help to get first-rounder Peter Skoronski back (thank goodness the Titans drafted him, by the way, and resisted reaching for a quarterback). Yes, it’ll help to get right tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere back from a six-game suspension.

But should we really expect a rookie and a second-year player who has been sitting to suddenly be the magic bullets that fix this?

Nah, it’ll take more than that. It’ll take coaching to work around this offensive line. It’ll take a bold change in approach and scheme — maybe personnel, too — to be able to better mask the Titans’ deficiencies up front. It’ll take creativity and flexibility to adjust on the fly when Henry is no longer the answer and Tannehill is under siege.

“We're going to do our best to keep working, keep improving, find a way to make it work,” Tannehill said. “That's all you can do at this point is keep working and finding ways we can protect and get the ball off downfield.”

A miserable Sunday in Cleveland wasn’t a season killer. But it needs to be a wake-up call.

Otherwise, Vrabel’s message might prove painfully true.

This indeed could be a very long season.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: The Tennessee Titans' problem is obvious. The solution? Not so much