The 2023 NFL Week 6 Roundup | Used Nissan, Like New, Low Mileage, Priced to Move
The John Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge in Nashville soars 80 feet majestically above the Cumberland River and has long been known as the kinetic, secret sauce to football in Music City. The bridge serves as a crucial artery linking America’s most vibrant, soulful, music-infused city with America’s most boisterous, brash and cash-infused pastime. It takes just 15 tranquil minutes to walk from the storied, debaucherous bars on Broadway to the clickety-clackety turnstiles at Nissan Stadium, home to the Tennessee Titans, via a picturesque overhead truss bridge neatly framing Nashville’s jagged — and ever-burgeoning — skyline. The bridge, at 114 years old, remains a treasured crown jewel of the city — listed among the National Register of Historic Places — and has lovingly been maintained with more than $15M in repairs and improvements in just that past 20 years. That precise Music City love and adoration for historic structures terminates abruptly on the eastern banks of the Cumberland. That’s where the Titans, the NFL, state and city leaders have unanimously declared Nissan Stadium to be in a precarious state of disrepair, at just the tender age of 24. An intolerable relic. And so, it must go, being tossed aside like yesterday’s uncooked fish. In its place will rise a new $2.2B behemoth a few blocks further from the river that has sparked swirls of discontent as the Titans star in an all-too-familiar taxpayer-funded episode of House Hunters gone wild.
Boosters armed with shovels and toothy grins at Nissan Stadium broke ground in 1997 with the glistening facility opening on-time for the dawning of the 1999 NFL Season as host to the recently arrived (from Houston as the Oilers) and christened Tennessee Titans. Constructed at a then-cost of $290M ($515M in 2023 dollars), Nissan was built as a state-of-the-art venue meant to last generations. At 1.5M square feet, the colorful facility currently boasts of 60 concession stands serving 67,700 guests across three open air levels. 143 luxury suites ornament 11,492 Club Level seats. Parking for 7500 vehicles on the apron of the stadium allow for maximum excitement as tailgating festivities spin up and off. Impossibly easy foot access to Nissan via the pedestrian bridge complete an urban planner’s best-case scenario for rehabilitating and better-utilizing a previously blighted industrial/warehousing district bisected from the city lights by a turgid river. Tennessee and Nashville taxpayers funded the entire project (except $23M which came from the sale of Personal Seat Licenses) figuring the draw of football (and spin-off fan consumption activities at hotels and the like) in Nashville proper would more than offset the hulking, pricey buy-in. In return, the Titans signed a 40-year lease. Things went well for more than two decades. A new high-output, custom commissioned sound system was installed in 2012 alongside a raft of high-speed elevator bank upgrades. Brand new mezzanine-mounted LED ribbon boards arrived to add visual pizzaz to the already animated atmosphere. The endzone scoreboards were replaced as well becoming — at the time — the second largest displays of their kind in the world, second only to those on hand at AT&T stadium.
Meanwhile, the era of the NFL mega-stadium building boom began in earnest with the arrival of the Cowboy’s $1.3B aforementioned AT&T stadium in 2009. Jets/Giants MetLife ($1.6B) in 2010, 49ers Levi’s ($1.3B) in 2014, Vikings US Bank ($1.1B) in 2016, ATL’s Mercedes-Benz ($1.6B) in 2017, LAR/LAC’s So-Fi ($5.5B) and LAR’s Allegiant ($2B) both in 2020, have all landed since with ever-escalating price tags and luxurious amenities, rakish styling and Super Bowl designated siting to match. The Titans looked on in glassy-eyed envy. Suddenly, their mere $300M plaything seemed unworthy of neither the winning team it hosted nor the city it resided so loudly within. The twin openings of So-Fi in LA and Allegiant in Vegas during the pandemic were two bridges too far for the team. IN February last year, the Titans abruptly halted all ongoing and planned renovations at Nissan, shocking city and state leaders. Conveniently and right on queue, the Team two months later on May 20th came forward with its depiction of Nissan as “among the worst [venues] in the NFL.” It cited years of neglect that had left the facility in a serious state of disrepair. The team CEO published photos of expansion joints with yawning gaps, crumbling concrete exposing rusted rebar, chronic flooding and areas where the structure was physically separating from its foundation. It certainly didn’t look good. What the team proposed looked worse. It hired a so-called independent inspector who miracle-of-miracles came back with an autopsy essentially mothballing the then 23 year old stadium. It pointed to a nearly $1.8B repair punchlist to bring the facility up to what the team’s lease with the city called for. Critically, the lease stipulated that the city maintain the venue as “world class.” Purposely nebulous. The Titans see world-class in the vein of So-Fi and Allegiant. The city sees world-class, well, differently. What they did read correctly in the Titans’ explosive infrastructure accusations was a thinly-veiled smoke signal to lawyer-up as the Team intended to explore all options available to them in breaking its lease and potentially walking. To where, remained uncertain. Shots fired, to say the least.
The city was left with little choice but to take the bait; a cantankerous yet happy tenant is eons better than one who is aggrieved and a flight risk. City leaders were, in turn, aghast at what the Titans had conjured up as their initial counter-proposal to the city’s offer to revisit Nissan’s renovation wishlist. The Team wanted nothing more to do with Nissan citing outdated facilities for a team having long outgrown the venue’s quaint, plodding design and functionality. The Titans argued for the need of a sprawling entertainment/retail district to rival Nashville’s glam on the western side of the Cumberland. Twin cross-river twinkling jewels, or so the thought went. City leaders cautiously followed along until the finances slide appeared on-screen after all the gauzy, happy computer renderings that had come before. $2.1B. Only in the NFL does a $2B new stadium pencil out to be cheaper than a team-proposed pie-in-the-sky $1.8B Nissan renovation checklist. In the team’s telling, the creation of a throbbing, thriving entertainment hub blocks from a to-be-demolished-Nissan foretold civic tax fortune. A tax fortune not possible with the positioning of Nissan as it stands at present.
Oh but $2.1B sure does buy pretty stuff. Featuring a reduced 62,000 fan capacity where there are purportedly no nosebleed seats, the new complex will reside beneath a permanent, translucent ETFE film, cable-supported roof; very similar to the one So-Fi made famous. Exterior terraces and porches are to be blessed with IG-ready backdrops of the Nashville’s glistening, beckoning promise. The project, as designed, will be LEED-certified and constructed of locally-sourced, sustainable materials by local union trades. A “hype video” dropped on Twitter to extoll all these virtue and more. Further, the area immediately surrounding the new stadium that abuts Nissan and will be completely reimagined and redeveloped. Nissan will be razed and an entertainment/retail/residential mega-development with snake its way to the Cumberland, and the jazz of Nashville via the John Siegenthaler pedestrian bridge. Titans officials pointed to generously-estimated syphons of tax receipts from all these new east Cumberland multi-economies as proof that the project is more than well-worth the tremendous squeeze. OH, yah, and Nissan’s infamous mens-to-womens restroom imbalance will be corrected. So, THIS, is how $2.1B costs less than $1.8B.
City leaders gripped their seats and gulped in exasperation as they reconciled the audacity of the plan before them. They knew they’d need more eyes on the plan, cooks in the kitchen and a bigger checkbook. But they weren’t exactly unopposed, side-eyes notwithstanding. But what politician doesn’t like bright, buzzy civic growth? What politician doesn’t follow along with when the town’s most vocal tenant points? And so, just like in 1997, city leaders descended upon the state Capitol (perfectly situated in Nashville) with their alligator arms firmly stuffed in pockets, heads nodded down. Cognizant of the need to keep the NFL and the Titans fed in Nashville, incredibly a deal was made. A final (for now) $2.2 budget was approved for the project this past Fall. Taxpayers will bear $1.2B of the cost with the Team and NFL covering $900M. So the Team will have much more skin in the game this go-round but the deal disrupts the recent trend of rapidly declining dependance upon public financing. It represents a nearly 50% increase in public funding from the taxpayer’s $850M allocation for the Bills new stadium in Orchard Park, announced just last year. These staggering numbers paint an uncomfortable portrait of a delicate dance to ever-quickening music among tone dead partners with flat feet.
But we go along with it, begrudgingly, just because. WE all like it because who among us can resist that intoxicating new home smell and the noise of all the bells and whistles. Only in the NFL can a 24 year old perfectly-good stadium be brushed aside and discarded, dismissed as a fossil. Only in the NFL can house-envy set off an arms race to hoist aloft the NFL’s latest white elephant. Only in the NFL can talk of a new stadium distract from (or be an impetus for) a losing team playing within it. Cough, Titans (2–4 and last in AFC South), cough. And why not when it’s always other people’s money. Nissan, you had a good run, but you have to go. As you are unceremoniously pulled apart, a chunk of concrete at a time, your longtime companion the John Siegenthaler Pedestrian Bridge sighs and weeps. In a way, we all do. May you rest in peace.
Onto the NFL age Week 6 and may previously-held season presumptions also rest in peace. There are no more lossless teams and squads all but left for nothing have come squawking back into relevance. A wonderful byproduct of easly-ish season life in the NFL. Starting last Thursday, the atrocious Broncos took on the defending Super Bowl champions in KC at home and predictably lost, 8–19. That was expected. Unexpected was the lack urgency, absence of energy, missing declaration of intent so synonymous of the Chiefs in recent years. Watching the game, the lay viewer wouldn’t be wrong in sensing something amiss with the team. Sure Mahomes threw for 300+ yards and Travis Kelce enjoyed yet another triple-digit REC yardage game. Something is off and clouds form over Arrowhead in a game that was more belabored than it ought to have been. Odds-on Super Bowl favorites the 49ers suffered a rare stinging defeat at Brownies. Star SF QB can-do-nothing-wrong-until-now Brock Purdy picked up the first regular season loss of his auspicious career with a surprising languid performance (12/27 125yds 1TD T INT). Maybe it was the raw weather. Maybe it was to do with the loss of offensive compadres in Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel, both out to injury. Definitely it was inopportune missed field goals that drew the curtain around the team. Good on CLE backup QB PJ Walker, a player whose been cut 11 times in his career including a stint in the XFL. He had his moment in the rain and managed to extinguish SF’s afterburner, 19–17, leading to the west coast team’s crash landing into reality.
Up at the $1.6B MetLife stadium, the Jets skillfully defeathered the visiting Eagles, 20–14, a first in franchise history. Along with the feathers and dignity, missing is PHL’s 5–0 record. That sound you hear is the air coming from PHL’s enthusiasm machine. Emabattled backup QB Zach Wilson managed to stay the course without any flagrant errors while throwing up OK numbers. The secret to the team’s recent dominance is its quickly hardening sturdy and menacing defense. The DEF applied a maximum pressure campaign on the Eagles’ traditional offensive strength and a grounded and defanged Jalen Hurts resulted. NYJ shutout the Eagles in the second half and never looked back. Down in Miami, the first quarter unfolded improbably like a disaster of epic proportions when the visiting 0–6 Panthers went up 14–0 against the AFC East top seed. Then the Fins got back in the kitchen and rattled off 28 unanswered points in a row, tacking on 14 more in the 4th for good measure. The profligate Team is now averaging more than 37 points a game, the most of any team since the Broncos a decade ago. The ugly Panthers received the business end of that dominance. The 42–21 results speak for themselves.
In our Round Robin, the forlorn Titans traveled all the way to London to be turned away by the Ravens 16–24. That new stadium replacement for them can’t come soon enough, to disguise and distract from what lays beneath. The Commanders with the promising Sam Howell under center took away a much-needed WIN in Atlanta, a team with a defensive lineup much better than it has any right to be. In Cinci, the Bengals renaissance continues powerfully with Joe Burrow’s whole calf thing a relic of Week 1. SEA had a messy, sloppy game and a 13–17 loss to the Bengals resulted. JAX’s hot streak is settling in nicely among Jags fans so accustomed to disappointment as the visiting Colts needn’t have taken their coats off, 37–20. Though Trevor Lawrence’s knee injury has the potential to reverse that narrative post haste. The Pats lost, again, the Rams crushed the Cards, the Lions thrashed in Tampa Bay and prove why they are atop the AFC North by a Detroit mile and the Giants pressed the Bills Sunday night in a game they could have won but for a comedy of self-imposed errors. The 9–14 NYG loss is of no comfort to the Bills who deserve no commendation for a WIN they made look as difficult as possible making for an uncomfortable game to watch for fans of both teams.
