Are repeated mistakes who Tennessee Titans are, or is team still figuring out what it is?

Big men feel big emotions.

"You keep making the same mistakes over and over again, you almost want to punch yourself in the face," offensive tackle JC Latham said after the Tennessee Titans' 24-17 loss to the New York Jets Sunday .

Yes, another Sunday came and went with another series of nearly identical Titans blunders. More self-inflicted turnovers. Another punt blocked. Another first-half lead squandered. Quarterback Will Levis called it shooting-yourself-in-the-foot déjà vu. Coach Brian Callahan called it "the same story as the last one."

But it's not the same story. Not really. The Titans' loss in Chicago Week 1 was a runaway train barreling off its tracks and into a city block. Things were very much good, and then they very much weren't.

ESTES: Same Titans, same mistakes

This loss was different. The Titans were never as in-control against the Jets as they were in the first half against the Bears, and they were never as out-of-control Sunday as they were in the second half of the Bears game. If the Week 1 loss was a cautionary tale about extremes, the Week 2 loss was a cautionary tale about nature and nurture.

Are the Titans repeating these mistakes because this is who they are, or are they repeating mistakes because they haven't figured out what they are yet?

"It’s so crazy," receiver Tyler Boyd said. "We’re there, we’re just not there because we’re not protecting the football."

Latham recalls a moment before the season when Callahan told the team about how it's easy to lose games in the NFL but it's hard to win them. That's the Titans' predicament. From 2019 to 2023, 53% of NFL games were decided by eight points or fewer. If a team's lacing up on a Sunday, there's a little better than a 50-50 shot they'll play a game decided by one or two plays. More often than not, the team that loses is the team that made the couple of miscues it wishes it hadn't.

It's convenient to point to the turnovers and the blocked punts and the big, tide-changing moments as indicators that the Titans are coughing games away. There's more at play, though.

Take the Titans' last gasp against the Jets. The offense lined up for a fourth-and-goal from the 14-yard line. Callahan dialed up a play designed to pry space open for Boyd on an in-breaking route two yards across the goal line.

MORE: How new Nissan Stadium is progressing: What Tennessee Titans fans can see on game day

When Levis fired the ball Boyd's way, the receiver made contact with the ball about a yard and a half shy of the end zone. Boyd bobbled the pass and it fell incomplete, but even if he'd made the catch, he wouldn't have been in the right position.

"We didn’t quite get deep enough," Callahan said. "Even if we had caught it, you know we’re going to be short. We’ve got to be in the end zone. It’s those details where we aren’t good enough yet."

If there's any solace in a moment like that, it's the reality that the Titans aren't confused about these losses. These aren't perplexing, back-to-the-drawing-board failures. And they're not complete failures, either. Just the momentary, excruciating lapses that cause teams to lose close games.

Good teams usually fix them. Bad teams usually don't.

"It’s not like we’re out there and we just can’t figure it out and nothing’s working," Latham said. "We have things that are working. There’s areas we know we can improve on, areas we know that if we fix it here or fix it there, we’ll be great.

"You’re going to throw jabs and some of them are going to land, some of them are going to knock them out. Some of them are going to miss and you might get knocked down in the process," he added. "You can’t hang your head on the failures of things."

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: Are repeated mistakes who Tennessee Titans are, or is team still figuring out what it is?