Tennessee Titans
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- Date:
- 1960 - present
- Headquarters:
- Nashville
- Areas Of Involvement:
- American football
- Related People:
- Randy Moss
- Earl Campbell
- Steve McNair
- George Blanda
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Tennessee Titans, American professional gridiron football team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans play in the American Football Conference (AFC) of the National Football League (NFL) and earned a berth in Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000. The franchise was located in Houston, Texas, and was known as the Oilers from 1960 to 1996, during which time it won two American Football League (AFL) championships (1960 and 1961).
The Oilers were one of the eight original AFL teams when the upstart league was founded in 1960. Led by quarterback George Blanda, they won the inaugural AFL title and repeated as champions the following year. The team returned to a third consecutive AFL title game in 1962, but they lost a close contest in double overtime to the Dallas Texans. The Oilers then posted four consecutive losing seasons, and Blanda was released in 1967 after the team won only 3 of their 14 games in 1966. Houston rebounded to make playoff appearances in 1967 and 1969.
The 1970s brought an AFL-NFL merger and a downturn in the Oilers’ fortunes, as the team won just one game in 1972 and again in 1973. Houston slowly improved over the course of the decade, and, after colourful head coach Bum Phillips was hired in 1975 to reinvigorate the team, they returned to the postseason in 1978. Behind an offense featuring bruising running back Earl Campbell and flashy wide receiver and kick returner Billy (“White Shoes”) Johnson and a defense led by linebacker Robert Brazile and end Elvin Bethea, the Oilers teams of the late 1970s enraptured the Houston fan base. These “Luv Ya Blue” Oilers (nicknamed for the fans’ adoration of the blue-clad team) advanced to conference championship games after the 1978 and 1979 seasons but were defeated on each occasion by the Pittsburgh Steelers. A less-successful playoff berth came in 1980, and the Oilers quickly fell back toward the bottom of the AFC standings during the early to mid-1980s.
The Oilers signed quarterback Warren Moon out of the Canadian Football League in 1984, and the team soon boasted one of the most high-powered offenses in the league, also anchored by Hall of Fame lineman Bruce Matthews. Moon led the Oilers to seven straight postseason berths from 1987 to 1993, but they did not manage to advance to a single conference championship in that span. The frustrated Oilers ownership then traded away many of the team’s best players, including Moon, and the team posted a 2–14 win-loss record during the 1994 season. During that year the Oilers promoted to head coach defensive coordinator Jeff Fisher, who would go on to have the longest coaching tenure in team history and oversee the franchise’s most successful period.
Fisher’s first seasons in charge were overshadowed by the team ownership’s desire to have the city of Houston build a new football-only stadium and the Oilers’ subsequent relocation to Nashville in 1997. The Oilers played one season in Memphis and one in Nashville at Vanderbilt University’s football stadium before their home stadium was completed prior to the 1999 season. The team was then rechristened the Tennessee Titans, a name derived from Nashville’s sobriquet of “the Athens of the South.”
The Titans won 13 games in 1999 behind the standout play of quarterback Steve McNair and running back Eddie George, and the team’s first playoff game in Nashville ended in memorable fashion. Trailing the Buffalo Bills by a point with 16 seconds remaining, the Titans fielded a short kickoff, and tight end Frank Wycheck threw a lateral across the field to receiver Kevin Dyson, who easily scored a game-winning 75-yard touchdown in a play that became known as the “Music City Miracle.” The Titans then won two additional road playoff games to earn the franchise’s first Super Bowl berth. In the Super Bowl the Titans again found themselves trailing their opponent (the St. Louis Rams) with seconds remaining, and the game ended with Dyson being dramatically tackled at the 1-yard line as he attempted to score the tying touchdown. The Titans returned to the postseason in three of the next four seasons and advanced to the AFC championship game in 2002 (a loss to the Oakland Raiders).
After a few losing seasons, in 2007 the Titans again established themselves as one of the AFC’s best teams. In 2008 they won 13 games to post the best record in the NFL but were upset at home by the Baltimore Ravens in the first round of the playoffs. The team’s success was short-lived. In 2013 the Titans missed the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season, the team’s longest postseason drought since the franchise relocated to Tennessee. The franchise returned to the playoffs following the 2017 season, losing in the second round after Tennessee had notched its first postseason victory in 14 years. In 2019 the team posted its fourth consecutive 9–7 record and squeezed into the playoff field as the sixth and lowest seed in the AFC. Tennessee then went on an unexpected run, beating the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots and the top-seeded Ravens in consecutive postseason road games. The team’s hot streak ended in the AFC championship game with a loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.