The Tennessee Titans are back in the AFC Championship for the first time since 2002, and Nashville, unsurprisingly, is on cloud nine.
“It’s really insane right now,” The Tennessean Titans reporter Erik Bacharach said on After Hours with Amy Lawrence. “They’re planning a watch party on Lower Broadway, which is something similar to what they did for the draft here, which was in April, and that scene was surreal; it was crazy. I think this will be something to that effect. . . . The way they’re doing it, they went into New England, they went into Baltimore, beat those teams, the way Derrick Henry is running – there’s a lot of reasons to be excited about this team. The buzz, you can’t walk 10 feet in Nashville without hearing about the Titans right now.”
The Titans play the Chiefs at Arrowhead this Sunday at 3:05 p.m. ET. Tennessee beat Kansas City, 35-32, in Week 10, as Derrick Henry rushed 23 times for 188 yards and two touchdowns.
“That’s the game where he got going,” Bacharach said. “He had over 180 rushing yards, and from there, was pretty much unstoppable the rest of the season. That’s obviously carried over into the playoffs.”
The Titans trailed Kansas City 29-20 midway through the fourth quarter but remained committed to the running game. Henry capped a 10-play, 75-yard drive with a 1-yard touchdown run, and Adam Humphries won the game with a 23-yard touchdown reception with less than a minute to go.
“I think a lot of teams in the NFL pass a lot during a drive like that – midway through the fourth quarter, trailing by multiple scores,” Bacharach said. “The Titans stayed committed to the run, and I think that’s been a hallmark of their M.O. I think that will be a key on Sunday, just staying committed to the run, even if you fall down a couple of scores. If you fall three scores down, you kind of get in trouble, but Derrick Henry is the heartbeat of this offense. He’s really the foundation for everything. Everything sort of stems from him, and you have to get him going. Week 10 is really where that started to show for the Titans this season.”