INDIANAPOLIS — Tennessee Titans defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons sat at his locker Sunday afternoon in the visitors’ clubhouse at Lucas Oil Stadium and took offense to the playful attitudes around him after the team’s fourth consecutive loss.
He didn’t think it was the time or place for such lightheartedness, and the two-time Pro Bowl selection wasted no time expressing his exasperation to the reporters gathering around him.
“At this point, and I said this a couple weeks ago, it’s like, ‘What are we really playing for? We’re building for next year,'” Simmons said after a 38-30 loss to the Indianapolis Colts, an AFC South Division rival and a team — unlike the Titans — that still has the possibility of making the playoffs.
“If I see guys who want to quit,” Simmons added, “I don’t want to be their teammate.”
For a franchise that started this season with such promise — a new coach, a young quarterback with a seemingly bright future and a defense that has held up its end of the bargain most of the season — things seem to be unraveling rapidly.
And it’s become increasingly frustrating to Simmons and others.
Tennessee (3-12) has lost six of its past seven games and has allowed two of its past four opponents to rush for 200 or more yards. In the setback against Indianapolis (7-8), running back Jonathan Taylor handled the Titans for 218 yards and three scores on 29 carries as the Colts rushed for 335 yards as a team, breaking a franchise record that was set in 1956 when they were still in Baltimore.
How bad was it? The Titans allowed their highest rushing total since the franchise formerly known as the Houston Oilers moved to Tennessee ahead of the 1997 season, and Simmons found nothing funny about it.
“Every week when we turn on the tape, it’s the same …” Simmons said. “Guys are out of position, they’re not where they should be, the instincts aren’t there. Stopping the run is not hard. But it does take all 11 guys. It’s not just the defensive line. That’s where it starts, but it just feels like the pieces aren’t fitting right.”
Simmons emphasized that last point more than once, and he knows it will be exposed again in the latest review of game footage.
Taylor went virtually untouched on a 65-yard sprint down the right side of the field to give the hosts a 14-7 lead in the first half.
Given the chance to make adjustments at halftime, the Titans returned to the field and on the first offensive play watched Taylor sprint 70 yards down the left sideline to make it 31-7. His third touchdown run, a 1-yard plunge midway through the third quarter, put Tennessee in a 38-7 hole.
“Just look at the tape, there’s no secret,” said rookie defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat, who left the game midway through the first quarter when he was inadvertently poked in the right eye by Taylor.
Sweat returned later in the half, but the problems didn’t go away.
Tennessee added three more turnovers to the league-high 29 it had entering the game, which was a primary reason first-year head coach Brian Callahan benched quarterback Will Levis, who took over as starter midway through his rookie season last year but got pulled a week earlier in the second half of a home loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. This time, Callahan counted on Mason Rudolph, who entered Sunday 1-2 as Tennessee’s starter this season after previously filling in when Levis was injured.
A seventh-year pro, Rudolph was 23-of-34 passing for 252 yards and two scores against Indianapolis, but his interception late in the first half allowed the Colts to extend a 17-7 lead to 24-7 entering halftime. His third interception — the second pick by Kenny Moore II — as time expired, was an ugly exclamation point on the outcome for Tennessee, which scored the final 23 points of the game to make it close.
“We need to play cleaner,” Callahan said. “The down-to-down consistency just isn’t there. We put ourselves in a hole early, but it’s been an issue all year. It showed up again.”
In between the errant throws, Taylor and Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson ran wild — something Simmons found so upsetting, he spoke out. Again.
“It’s frustrating as hell, 3-12? I didn’t expect this,” he said. “Coming out of camp, I felt like we had a great camp. At this point, we have to figure out what we’re fighting for. Every guy in the locker room, every coach, needs to ask themselves what we’re playing for.”
Sunday was a highly redeeming performance for Taylor, a fifth-year pro and former NFL rushing champion who a week earlier mistakenly dropped the ball before crossing the goal line on what would have been a 41-yard touchdown in a loss to the Denver Broncos.
“You want to be able to run it every game, but, obviously, it was going good today and guys were popping it,” Indianapolis coach Shane Steichen said of the team’s performance on the ground. “Single-game record? Incredible. It’s fun to watch.”
Not for everyone, though.
“The speed of Jonathan Taylor showed up, and we couldn’t get him on the ground,” Callahan said. “He had a couple of explosive runs, and sometimes that’s all it takes.”
Although the Colts need help to earn a wild-card playoff berth, their remaining regular-season schedule is favorable with next week’s goad game against the New York Giants (2-13) followed by a home finale against the Jacksonville Jaguars (3-12).
The Titans’ final two games are against division play as they visit the Jaguars next week, then host the Houston Texans, who have already earned their second straight AFC South title.