NASHVILLE – Moments after his Tennessee Titans had throttled the Kansas City Chiefs 27-3 on Sunday, an edgy Mike Vrabel answered questions from media members, sounding more like a man whose team had lost two straight games than one whose squad had just posted consecutive big victories.
The intent, apparently, was to make sure neither he nor his players got carried away with themselves following impressive wins over the teams that faced off in last season’s AFC Championship (Buffalo and Kansas City) six days apart.
There are 10 more games in the regular season, after all.
“Just trying to stay focused and knowing that every week is going to be a new challenge,” Vrabel said Monday. “I guess that is where my mind goes, just to the next game and what it is going to be. How are we going to prepare? What is practice going to look like?”
Try as he might, however, Vrabel can’t keep everyone from focusing a little longer on the Titans’ accomplishments, as they knocked off both the 2020 AFC Championship participants at Nissan Stadium.
Tennessee’s odds to make the playoffs – and then make some noise – are taking some noticeable steps in the right direction, just weeks after a loss to the lowly New York Jets. A win Sunday at Indianapolis would improve the long-range forecast even more, since it would give the Titans a three-game lead in the AFC South and a head-to-head tiebreaker advantage over the Colts.
It can’t hurt either that the Titans – who face the Colts, Rams and Saints in their next three games -- have the third-easiest schedule remaining for the rest of the season, per ESPN NFL prognosticator Mike Clay as well as Pro Football Focus.
Here’s a sampling of how their image has changed in recent weeks:
• When the Titans lost to the Jets, their odds of winning the Super Bowl to their lowest point of the year. Consecutive victories over Jacksonville, Buffalo and Kansas City steadily moved the line, and as of now Tennessee is +1,400 to win it all, according to SI Sportsbook. Only eight teams have better odds. Along the same lines, the Titans are now +700 in the money line to win the AFC Championship. Only Buffalo, Baltimore and Kansas City are considered better bets – and, as noted early, Tennessee has beaten two of those three.
• Football Outsiders currently gives the Titans an 80.7 percent chance to reach the playoffs, a figure that climbed a full 7.1 percentage points following the victory over Buffalo.
• The analytics sports website fivethirtyeight.com saw the Titans jump 38 points in the site’s evaluation formula following their latest triumph. That was the third-highest jump in the league behind Cincinnati (which won at Baltimore) and Indianapolis (which won at San Francisco).
• In the eyes of The New York Times, the win over the Bills increased Tennessee’s already strong playoff chances from 85 percent to 92 percent.
What might a win against the Colts mean on Sunday?
The chances of making the playoffs – after playing just eight games – would rise to 98 percent, according to the Times. But here’s another interesting number to follow. If the Titans beat Indianapolis, they would have a 33 percent chance of earning a bye week in the postseason. A loss to the Colts drops that bye-week probability to 14 percent.
And just in case you’re wondering whether all these playoff percentages mean a thing to the players – with the season not even at its midpoint – rest assured they’re more inclined to follow in Vrabel’s footsteps.
“We are not going to get caught up with … beating two great teams and now smelling ourselves a little bit,” Titans safety Kevin Byard said. “We are not even caught up in that. We are going to keep handling our business.”
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