While they were 6-2 on the year, the Tennessee Titans were 7.5 point underdogs on the road against the Los Angeles Rams Sunday night, and everyone on Sunday Night Football except Mike Tirico picked the Rams. That was somewhat understandable considering that this was the Titans’ first game this year without star running back Derrick Henry. But the Titans still came out with a 28-16 win, with seven of the Rams’ points only coming in the final minute, and a backbreaking back-to-back sequence of interceptions from Los Angeles QB Matthew Stafford (the first time he’d ever done that) was key to that outcome. The first one set up an easy touchdown, and the second was directly returned for a touchdown:
Matthew Stafford follows up an awful interception with a… pick-six.
The NFL is a very weird place today. pic.twitter.com/eVxwAo6WuX
— The Comeback (@thecomeback) November 8, 2021
Yeah, that’s not what you want. And these two plays were crucial to the outcome, and they help explain why the score wound up the way it did despite Stafford throwing for 294 yards and a touchdown (against these two interceptions) to Titans’ QB Ryan Tannehill’s 143 yards (with one touchdown and one interception). Granted, this wasn’t all that happened in the game; the Rams also had a touchdown reversed after Tyler Higbee was ruled out of bounds on a close play, and settled for the field goal, and Stafford was sacked five times on the night. But these two mistakes loomed particularly large, as Stafford discussed afterwards:
We’ll see if the Rams can improve in their next game, next Monday on the road against the San Francisco 49ers.
[The Comeback on Twitter; photo from George Walker IV/The Tennessean via USA Today Sports]