Tennessee Titans 'should've won' vs the Bears: How to convert those to actual wins

CHICAGO — Tell the people how you really feel, Calvin Ridley.

“We should’ve won the game,” he said after the Tennessee Titans’ 24-17 loss to the Chicago Bears in Week 1. “We should’ve won the game. I mean, we should’ve won the game.

"That’s all I can say: We should’ve won the game.”

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The Titans probably should’ve won. They built a 17-0 lead in the first half. They outgained the Bears by nearly 100 net yards. Quarterback Will Levis threw for more yards with a higher completion percentage than Bears rookie Caleb Williams. Tony Pollard had just two fewer rushing yards than the entire Chicago team. The defense didn’t give up a touchdown, and the only time the Bears crossed into the red zone, it was because a 67-yard kickoff return set up the offense.

By most reasonable metrics used to determine “the better team,” Ridley’s right. The Titans definitely could’ve, should’ve, won.

But . . . they didn’t.

“They didn’t win that game. We lost that game,” Levis said. “We know that. Credit to them . . . but that’s tough.”

So the Titans are 0-1 . There are no asterisks in the record books for unforced losses. Titans outside linebacker Arden Key brings up a good point. He starts off by saying the Titans probably would’ve won if they could’ve fixed four bad plays. But revisiting the idea later, he acknowledges that is true of almost every team that loses any game.

Losing winnable games isn’t rare. This is the NFL. Close games are much more common than blowouts. Counting the Titans, six of the eight losing teams that kicked off in the noon window Sunday lost by eight points or fewer.

This is a league of one-possession games. Luck is an element, and it’d be foolish to ignore it. Winning is a skill, though. The Titans talked about this throughout the preseason. And coming out of Week 1, it figures to remain a talking point.

“We’ve got to finish, man,” linebacker Kenneth Murray Jr. said. “We’ve got to have that mindset on all three phases.”

“We have a lot to clean up and a lot to work on,” coach Brian Callahan added. “It was the first game. We’ve got 16 more. We’ve got a lot to work on.”

It’s easy to play revisionist history with games like this one. What if special teams didn’t allow a blocked punt for a touchdown? What if Levis didn’t throw the pick-six that he himself described as “boneheaded”? What if the defense intercepted any of the three passes batted up in the air at the line of scrimmage that fell safely to the turf?

All good questions. All fair questions.

All questions that don’t really get to the core of what happened.

“Yeah, it’s tough. It’s tough,” Key said when asked about the difficulty of moving on after a loss like this one. “You’re going to see that film all week. You’re going to see the mistakes. We’ve just got to come in the following week and fix it. Because whatever we messed up this week, we’re going to see that (from the New York Jets) next week.”

“All we can do is keep that taste in our mouth and go back to practice,” Ridley added on the same topic. “It’s the first game of the season. We wanted to get the win but we didn’t. We’ve got a lot of time to get better.”

Playing well enough to win wasn’t the Titans’ problem Sunday. Actually getting the win was.

Until another opportunity to win presents itself — maybe next week or maybe later in the year — the Titans will be left dealing with that difficult reality.

Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com . Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Titans 'should've won' vs the Bears: How to convert those to actual wins