Mark WiedmerNASHVILLE - Tennessee Titans tight end Delanie Walker stood in front of his locker at Nissan Stadium late Sunday afternoon, all smiles and wisdom.
"This says we're a different team," bellowed Walker at the close of the team's 13-10 victory over the reigning Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos. "We're not the old Titans that everyone is used to. We come out here to play for 60 minutes and get the job done."
The biggest Titans win anyone can remember in some time took a second or two past 59 minutes to secure. At some point around one second into the game's final minute, Tennessee linebacker Avery Williamson forced Broncos tight end A.J. Derby to cough up the football, teammate Daimion Stafford recovered at the Denver 40 and the home team ran out the clock, though it often seemed as if close to half the crowd of 68,780 was cheering the visitors.
Nevertheless, the Titans won for the third time in four games to improve to 7-6 and remain tied with the Houston Texans for first place in the AFC South. In what is sure to excite both the Tennessee ticket office and Titans fans, the team hosts Houston to close the regular season Jan. 1, quite possibly with the automatic playoff berth that goes to the division winner on the line. Before then, Tennessee must play at Kansas City next Sunday and at Jacksonville on Christmas Eve.
"It's good to get over that hump of we-can't-get-over-.500," winning coach Mike Mularkey said. "We're doing things we haven't done in years."
What they did against the Broncos certainly wasn't expected, at least not this season. Back on April 28, the opening night of the NFL draft, the Titans - who were tied with Cleveland for the worst record in the league last season - completed their trade of the overall No. 1 pick to Los Angeles for a series of selections.
Yet here that team was Sunday, less than seven months later, defeating the reigning Super Bowl champs in a game Tennessee led from start to finish.
"All this does is reconfirms what we're doing, that we can play with anybody in this league," the 55-year-old Mularkey said. "All we've heard about is Denver's defense, and I wanted to get our defense out there and show we have a pretty good defense on our side, too."
So when the Titans won the pregame coin toss, Mularkey deferred to the second half. As if on cue, the Titans forced a three-and-out. Then the offense perfectly executed an 11-play, 70-yard drive that consumed more than six minutes of clock and put the home team on top after a DeMarco Murray 1-yard touchdown run. It was the ninth running play of the drive.
"One of our strengths is being able to run the football, chew up clock," Mularkey said. "It's part of our defense. It's a good way to keep (your own) defense off the field, it's a good way to keep their offense off."
At least one play from Tennessee's offense - a cut-block by wideout Harry Douglas on Denver cornerback Chris Harris - led to a brief brawl and brought the following response from Denver defensive back Aqib Talib.
"It was a dirty play by a sorry player," Talib reportedly told Mike Klis of 9News. "He didn't do nothing coming into this game. He didn't catch no passes. He come into this game and chop guys in the back. He got the same agent as me (Todd France), so when I see his (behind) in Atlanta, I'm going to beat his (behind)."
Countered Douglas, an Atlanta native who played at Louisville before spending the majority of his NFL career with the Falcons: "I'm a tough player, I'm a gritty player. I'm not a dirty player, no matter what anybody says."
One could even argue the mere fact the Titans are getting under opponents' skin rather than under the soles of their shoes is a vast improvement.
But it seems like so much more than that.
"There's been a change in the culture around here," said kick returner Marc Mariani, who's in his second stint with the Titans after playing for the Chicago Bears. "We joke a lot, play a lot, hang out together outside the office a lot. There's been years and years of being on the wrong end here. But we're getting better every week now."
The character of veterans such as Mariani, Murray, offensive lineman Ben Jones and defensive back Rashad Johnson - new Titans all this season - is one reason why this team is getting better.
Twice a visitor to Chattanooga for the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision title game during his playing days at the University of Montana, the first words out of Mariani's mouth after he learned he was answering questions from a Scenic City reporter were: "Are you all OK down there after the fires? Was anybody down there hurt?"
On the football front, the Titans sounded like a team determined to not let Sunday's victory possibly hurt the chance to win again.
"We have to make sure to take this win, enjoy it, but in 24 hours we have to turn it around and get ready to play a good Kansas City team," Johnson said. "We are in a position where we wanted to be in April, which is a chance to win this division and get in the playoffs."
The last time the Titans played a postseason game, Barack Obama was still days from beginning his first term as the 44th president of the United States. So to get back to the playoffs after being bad enough to tie for the worst record in the NFL a year ago would be to call to mind the really old Titans, who used to go the playoffs fairly regularly and once reached the Super Bowl.
If that's not changing the culture, nothing is.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.