Titans wrap preseason with 24-15 loss to Bears, as Tennessee’s final tune-up raises new questions

The Tennessee Titans closed their preseason Saturday with a 24-15 loss to the Chicago Bears at Nissan Stadium. The setback, in the final game of the exhibition slate, matters less for the scoreboard than for what the Titans can learn from their late-stage roster evaluation and game-plan adjustments before the regular season begins.

In an entry from the team’s official site, Senior Writer and Editor Jim Wyatt broke down the contest through six categories of what stood out for Tennessee. While the Titans ultimately came up short, preseason finales often serve as the most meaningful day of the summer to sort out roles on offense, defense, and special teams when the margin for error tightens and coaches look for repeatable execution.

Preseason games are also where teams typically refine timing and communication, especially on third downs and in the red zone, when scripted looks give way to more improvisation and the starters tend to see limited reps. For Tennessee, the late-exhibition loss to Chicago will likely become a reference point for which areas held up under live game pressure and which ones need more work.

For the Titans, the most practical outcome of a 24-15 final is clarity on personnel. Coaches use these final snaps to determine who can handle increased responsibility within the team’s system, who provides the most consistent effort late in the game, and which units can win the “small battles” that decide field position and momentum. The Bears, for their part, will be able to point to what their defense and special teams were able to do against Tennessee’s rotating groups.

Because preseason rosters are in flux by design, it is also common for observers to focus on how Tennessee responded when game flow changed. When a team trails or exchanges scoring drives, late-game performance often reveals whether a unit can regroup, whether play-calling choices match the personnel on the field, and whether players execute assignments under less predictable looks.

Wyatt’s breakdown emphasizes that the game’s key lessons are not limited to one phase. In most preseason finales, the story is how offense, defense, and special teams interact, including whether a team turns stops into points and whether it prevents opponents from converting advantageous field position into sustained drives.

As Tennessee moves forward, the next layer of the evaluation will be how the lessons from this preseason loss translate into the team’s early regular-season identity. The preseason score itself will fade quickly, but the decisions that come from it will show up in who plays, who finishes, and how Tennessee manages critical situations in Week 1.

For fans, the watch item is simple: whether the Titans can turn the themes Wyatt outlined into cleaner execution and sharper coherence across units. In a preseason finale, the goal is not just to avoid mistakes, but to reduce them, and to carry that improvement into the first meaningful games of the year.