The Titans' Preseason Gamble: Why Tennessee's Starter-Heavy Approach Against San Francisco Could Backfire

There is a fundamental tension that exists in professional football during the preseason, one that has troubled coaches and executives since the advent of the modern NFL. How do you prepare your team adequately for the rigors of a 17-game regular season when your preparation partner is operating under an entirely different set of priorities? This is the exact dilemma facing the Tennessee Titans as they prepare for their Thursday night exhibition against the San Francisco 49ers, a contest that has all the makings of a classic preseason misalignment, the kind of game where the competitive realities on the field bear no resemblance to the actual intentions of the organizations involved.

Let me paint you the picture. The Titans, under the direction of head coach Brian Callahan in what is essentially his second full offseason with the team, has apparently decided that they need significant work in August. That's a reasonable assessment given the organizational transition the franchise has undergone. The Titans have new personnel, they have questions at key positions, and they have younger players who need to develop in game speed situations. All of that makes sense, and there is a logic to their approach. However, they are about to face a San Francisco 49ers team that, according to head coach Kyle Shanahan, will be sitting the vast majority of its starters. This is not a minor detail. This is not a curiosity. This fundamentally undermines the quality of competition that the Titans will be facing, and it raises serious questions about what exactly Tennessee will learn from this exercise.

Let's think about this in historical context for a moment. When a team sits its starters in the preseason, they are essentially saying that they feel prepared for the regular season, or at least that they feel confident enough in their existing knowledge of their roster that additional reps against starting-caliber competition are not a priority. The 49ers organization, with a roster that has been together for several years now, has a deep institutional knowledge of how their players perform. They understand their scheme, they understand their players' tendencies, and they believe they have enough information to move forward into the season. This is a luxury that the Titans, frankly, do not possess.

The question becomes this: what competitive value does Tennessee derive from sending its starters against second and third-string 49ers players? On the surface level, there is the argument that reps are reps, that playing against any opponent at game speed is better than not playing at all. I understand that argument. I have heard that argument made by coaches throughout my lifetime covering this league, and there is certainly a kernel of truth buried in there somewhere. But I also think it misses something crucial about how elite football teams use the preseason. Elite teams use the preseason to stress test their systems against other elite systems. They want to see how their offensive line communicates when it is facing genuine pass rush concepts, not the desperate improvisation of a backup linebacker trying to make the team. They want to see how their secondary reads and reacts when it is being challenged by schemes they will see in the regular season, not bent angles and lazy routes run by practice squad receivers.

The 49ers organization has a documented history of being conservative with their starters in the preseason. This is well known around the league. Kyle Shanahan is a coach who puts tremendous stock in preparation, in studying tape, in understanding schematic details before game day. He does not need his starting quarterback Brock Purdy getting hit by Tennessee's defensive line 20 times in August to know whether Purdy can execute the play action bootleg in week one. He already knows this. Conversely, Brian Callahan and the Titans organization are still very much in the process of building their identity, of integrating their new quarterback Will Levis into the system, of understanding which of their younger defensive players can play on an NFL stage against major competition.

This becomes especially significant when you consider the quarterback position. Will Levis, the former third overall pick in the 2023 draft, enters his second season with legitimate questions still swirling around his decision making and his ability to process information quickly at the line of scrimmage. He had a rookie season that was, let's be honest, uneven. He showed some dynamic athletic traits, some capability with his legs, some interesting throws, but he also showed inconsistency and occasionally poor judgment. Now, he is going to get significant reps against a 49ers team that will be asking its third string safety, a guy who is fighting to make the practice squad, to cover receiver responsibilities. What exactly does that teach you about your quarterback's readiness? What does it tell you about whether Levis can function in an NFL system when the most dangerous thing he will face is a blitz from a backup linebacker?

There is also the injury risk component that we should address. When you send your starters into an exhibition game, you are accepting an inherent risk that they could be injured by inferior competition. Your starting left tackle, the man who is responsible for protecting your quarterback's blind side during the season, gets a high ankle sprain in the third quarter against the 49ers' fourth string defensive end. Now you have lost valuable development time for your backups, you are forced to accelerate their preparation, and you have potentially put your quarterback in jeopardy for the regular season. These are not hypothetical concerns. These are real things that happen in the preseason every single year. The Titans are essentially accepting this risk in order to gain reps that may not be particularly valuable because of the mismatch in opponent quality.

Let me also address the elephant in the room, which is competitive integrity and what message this sends to Titans fans. If you are a Tennessee supporter, you tune in Thursday night expecting to see your team tested, expecting to see some actual football drama, some questions answered about your roster in a competitive situation. What you will instead witness is something closer to a scrimmage, a game where the San Francisco 49ers have essentially ceded field position and competitive advantage before the opening kickoff. You will see backups and third stringers on both sides of the ball trying to make roster decisions rather than two organizations genuinely competing. That is a legitimate letdown for anyone who sits down to watch the game.

The broader philosophical point here is that the preseason, while often dismissed as frivolous, actually serves an important function in how a team prepares for 17 games of genuine consequence. It is one of the last opportunities to see your players operating at game speed, with crowd noise, with the emotional reality of playing a game rather than running a drill. When you squander that opportunity by facing dramatically inferior competition, you are wasting a resource that cannot be recovered once the season begins. The Titans organization would have been far better served by choosing an opponent who was equally committed to using starters, creating a legitimate competitive environment where both teams could stress test their systems and answer real questions about their readiness.

The verdict here is this: the Titans are making a decision that prioritizes their internal development over actual competitive preparation. That might work out fine for them, and it might not. But they are absolutely making a choice that reduces the informational value of their preseason schedule, and that is a choice that carries risk, particularly for a team that is still in transition mode with its quarterback position and its overall identity. Sometimes in football, the simplest truth is also the most important one: you play the games to find out who you are. But you cannot really find out who you are if the games are fundamentally mismatched before the ball is ever kicked.