The last pass Ryan Tannehill threw in the 2021 postseason was an interception.
Instead of piloting the AFC’s No. 1 seed Titans to a late playoff victory over the underdog Bengals, Tannehill threw the pick led to Cincinnati’s game-winning 52-yard field goal as time expired.
Tannehill has spoken about how he needed weeks of therapy to get him out of a “dark place” following that loss. But now he can see those previous failures as a kind of motivation for the upcoming season.
“It’s just fuel,” Tannehill said this week, via Teresa Walker of the Associated Press. “You look at things in your past and experiences that you’ve been through and you can learn from them and you can use them as fuel as you move forward. So that’s the thought here in moving forward is attacking this year, each and every day and try to get the most out of it.”
Tannehill has experienced plenty of success since taking over as Tennessee’s starting quarterback midway through the 2019 season. He’s gone 30-13 as a starter, helping the Titans advance to the 2019 AFC Championship Game and winning the last two AFC South titles. But Tennessee hasn’t won a postseason game since that 2019 run.
Tannehill should be better in 2022 with a healthy Derrick Henry and a revamped receiving corps led by Robert Woods and Treylon Burks. And if he is, Tennessee could be on its way to a third straight division championship.