I preview every Los Angeles Chargers game by looking at their current strengths (and weaknesses) and comparing them to the strengths (and weaknesses) of the team they're about to face. This week, I was not able to find a strength for the Tennessee Titans, so I did two weaknesses instead.

Let's dig into how my preview holds up after the game:

Chargers Strength: Time of Possession

Titans Weakness: Time of Possession

Not surprisingly, the Chargers absolutely dominated the time of possession in their 27-20 win over the Titans. They finished with just 40 seconds shy of ten full minutes more possession than the Titans, the result of running 21 more plays than the Titans did.

To put it bluntly, the Chargers offense was dominant compared to the Titans offense. The undermanned Titans defense gave up 3 touchdowns to Justin Herbert (2 passing, 1 rushing) and generally looked unable to stop the LA attack.

The Titans were also terrible on the other side of the ball. They failed to keep drives going (1/9 on third downs is not going to cut it) and scored just 6 points on two field goals.

This itself was not the reason this game was closer than it should have been.

Chargers Weakness: Playing Down

Let's talk about it!

There we large chunks of this game in which the Titans were either leading or tied with the Chargers despite being the lesser team. 

Part of that was the Chargers offensive line, which has been decimated, allowing Herbert to get sacked 6 times and hit a bunch of other times. 

Part of it was Justin Herbert throwing a silly pick-six where he stared down his receiver and gave a bad Titans team a free touchdown:

Another part of it was the coverage team allowing Chimere Dike to get enough room on a punt return to use his speed and get into the end zone, once again giving a Titans team starved of offense free points:

Instead of finding ways to dominate the Titans, a bad team playing without most of their best players, the Chargers found ways to hurt themselves and let Tennessee stay in the game.

I can't say I'm surprised.

Titans Weakness: Cam Ward

Titans starting QB rookie Cam Ward complete less than half of his passes for a total of 145 passing yards. He also ran for 6 yards while trying to avoid being sacked for a 5th time.

He threw no picks and no touchdowns, but did fumble the ball twice (both recovered by his teammates). You could see signs of what could be the silhouette of a decent NFL QB some day, but he's nowhere near that yet. 

The fact that this QB, and this team, had a real chance to beat the Chargers on Sunday should scare the hell out of Jim Harbaugh and his coaching staff.