Move over angry and frustrated Titans fans, you’re about to have some new company: Apathetic Titans fans.
If most Titans weren’t already apathetic based on the last four seasons, the team did very little to slow them from arriving at that point with their season opener on Sunday.
The Titans lost – convincingly, 24-10 – at home to the New York Jets to open the season in a game that was not nearly as close as that score indicates.
Mind you, the Jets were like the Titans last year, winning just three games. So Nissan Stadium already had plenty of empty seats before this one ever kicked off.
By the time the Titans were trailing 20-3 in the second half, those in Columbia blue had headed for the exits, and the few thousand green-clad Jets fans in attendance had migrated to the lower bowl in time to chant “J-E-T-S” in celebration of a rare victory.
Visiting fans taking over Nissan Stadium is not a rare sight these days. And it will likely get worse as Titans fans tire of a product that can’t win or even entertain while losing.
It would be one thing if the Titans were losing 40-30. But when it takes 57 minutes for this squirt-gun offense to even find the end zone, who can blame fans for staying home, finding something better to do with their time and money and selling their tickets online to visiting fans?
Numbers paint a grim picture
I get that it’s just the first game and things could get better. But Cam Ward throwing for 4.4 yards per pass attempt and the offense putting up less than 200 yards doesn’t make for a good way for a Titans fan to spend Sunday afternoons.
If things don’t improve in a hurry, Nissan Stadium could have wide swathes of empty seats in its final year. It’s almost a guarantee that “Fly, Eagles, Fly” will be sung at a loud volume Sunday when Philadelphia fans storm Nashville and take over the stadium.
The sad reality? The Titans have become what Vanderbilt football was in the 1990s: noncompetitive, showing few signs of improvement and powerless to prevent opposing fans from completely taking over game days.
There was a time when Titans fans who sold their tickets to Ravens, Cowboys or Steelers fans for big bucks on the secondary market were scorned. “Sell your seats to other Titans fans instead of the out-of-towners,” other Titans fans would say.
Now, it doesn’t even seem to matter.