Tennessee Titans and Underdogs That Vastly Exceed Expectations in Week 1

The Tennessee Titans came out in the opening week, in Marcus Mariota’s debut, and shattered early expectations by jumping on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers early and often. Mariota threw 4 touchdown passes in the first half, and the Titans won 42-14.

What should we expect this week? Was the perception vastly wrong on Tennessee, was it about Tampa Bay being terrible, or just mostly random?

Chase Stuart wrote about the Titans over at Football Perspective in regard to points over expectation in week 1. The results were very much mixed.

I’m going to look at it from the overall point spread record and how much they overachieved. (all data from the team game finder at pro-football-reference.com). Going back to 1990, there have been 22 other times a team has won a game outright in week 1 as an underdog, and covered the spread by at least 21 points. (The Titans were 3 point underdogs and won by 28).

How did those teams do the next week, and for the rest of the year?

Those teams went 7-13-2 against the spread in their next game, and 10-12 straight up.

For the entire remaining 15 games, those teams went 146-173-11 against the spread (45.9%), and 149-181 straight up (45.2%).

So, if anything, being somewhat skeptical and fading these teams has been a more profitable venture, as a week 1 unexpected blowout may stick in people’s minds a little more, given the primacy effect.

Seven of the 22 teams reached the postseason: Carolina 1996, Minnesota 1997, Miami 1999, Philadelphia 2000, Baltimore 2006, NY Jets 2009, Seattle 2010.

Of course, Tennessee has a new quarterback, and as Chase Stuart noted, that might be something that would tend to suggest the improvement is somewhat real. Of course, plenty of young teams that showed improvement also had to deal with learning to success early. That 2000 Eagles team, with a young Donovan McNabb at QB, blew out Dallas on the road in week 1 then came out flat the next week. With a Browns team that looked pretty bad in the opener, and playing a second consecutive road game, this one will be an interesting test of whether the Titans can stay focused.