Remember the Titans that won their first five games?

Mike Vrabel’s Tennessee Titans slumped in recent weeks following a strong start.

In many aspects, they were the talk of the 2019 NFL Playoffs. A year ago, the Tennessee Titans owned a 2-4 record after six games. Head coach Mike Vrabel made a change at quarterback, leaned on the team’s workhorse running back even more and, before you could say Ryan Tannehill and Derrick Henry, the team owned a 9-7 record and was playoff-bound.

The Titans would knock off the Patriots in the wild card round, surprise the top-seeded Ravens one week later at Baltimore and owned a double-digit lead in the AFC Championship Game at Kansas City before Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes did his thing.

Nonetheless, the club had the look of an up-and-comer. And when Tennessee got off to a 5-0 start this year (the franchise’s best since 2008), it looked like the team had picked up where it had left off the previous year.

But appearances can apparently be deceiving. While the team had few problems putting points on the board, the club’s defensive unit wasn’t getting the job done. During the team’s unbeaten start, the Titans’ defense forgot to show up too many times. The team allowed 30-plus points in wins over the Jaguars, Vikings and Texans — the latter in overtime.

But the club’s shaky defense has caught up with them as of late. In Thursday night’s 34-17 home loss to the rival Indianapolis Colts, Vrabel’s squad allowed 430 total yards, the fourth time in nine games that the team had surrendered 400-plus of offense to an opponent.

Tennessee’s saving grace has been a plus-10 turnover differential in their nine games. The Titans have forced 14 turnovers and coughed up the football only four times. But it’s also worth noting that 11 of those takeaways in their five wins and didn’t come up with a miscue in the losses to the Bengals and Colts.

Of course, Thursday night’s 17-point home loss to Indianapolis also featured a rough evening for the Titans’ special teams (via ESPN’s Turron Davenport). The biggest issue has been the season-long erratic showing by veteran kicker Stephen Gostkowski, who’s missed eight of his 20 field goal attempts and a pair of PATs.

The club has also used three different punters this year. But back to the defense, which has allowed 398.1 total yards per contest and 29 offensive touchdowns in nine outings.

There’s still a long way to go and the Titans and Colts both own 6-3 records atop the AFC South. And Vrabel’s club did lose at home to Indianapolis a season ago before avenging that setback on the road later that year. But a team that looked like it was riding the momentum of an impressive finish a season ago is suddenly stumbling.