Countdown to Kickoff: 72 Days
The countdown to kickoff continues.
The Tennessee Titans will open the 2020 regular season Sept. 14 at Denver. That is 72 days away. So, today we look at one way the number 72 figures into the team’s recent history.
The point of the NFL postseason is to make it to the Super Bowl.
The Tennessee Titans fell just short last season, but along the way they scored 72 points in the playoffs. That made it the second-highest scoring postseason run of the Titans era (1999-present) in terms of total points and points per game.
The only team to score more total points was the 1999 bunch that made it to Super Bowl XXXIV, which racked up 90 in four games. The only to top last season’s 24.0 points-per-game average was the 2002 team that averaged 29.0 in two contests.
Five times in 16 tries beginning with the 1999 run to Super Bowl XXXIV, Tennessee has scored 24 points or more in a playoff game. Two were last season – the 28-12 victory at Baltimore in the divisional round and the 35-24 loss to Kansas City in the AFC Championship.
Two of the remaining three were in 2002 – a 34-31 overtime victory over Pittsburgh in the divisional round and a 41-24 loss to Oakland in the AFC Championship. The only other one was the 33-14 AFC Championship triumph at Jacksonville that sent the 1999 team on to the Super Bowl.
The 2019 Titans scored 10 touchdowns (three rushing, six passing, one on an interception return), one more than the 1999 Titans did and more than any of the franchise’s other playoff teams from the past 21 years. In fact, it was the same number – in half the games – the previous four playoff teams (2003, 2007, 2008, 2017) combined.
