Tennessee Titans Morning Links: Beards of Honor Edition

by August West on Sep 4, 2008 8:52 AM CDT in Linkage Comment 13 comments

Jack Del Rio doesn't think the Titans are an elite AFC team, and Fisher wants the boys in 2 toned blue to know it.

Jeff Fisher runs down his 10 most defining moments of the past 10 years in Tennessee, and the 2002 beard that lead us back from a 1-4 start makes no appearance. I call shenanigans!

The Titans start the season at 16 in ESPN's Power Rankings, just above the Bucs and Jets... eww gross.

Michael Griffin becomes the first player kicked out of practice since Big Albert in 2003 after blowing up on Cary Williams, and Rob Bironas is finally off of the injury report; now if we can just teach Rob to catch passes...

A sportswriter thinks the pressure is on for Vince Young. In other news the sun rose in the east today and water is expected to be wet.

Bud Adams unveils the new Titans Ring of Honor that covers the Oilers years as well, but my favorite part is reading the comment left by an irate Houston fan at the bottom:

Disgusting. Those are basically ALL Oilers who played in a city hundreds of miles away. Who really cares that much in Tenn about these guys? Just Bud trying to rececitate the team he KILLED once again.

Comment boards > barstools for laughably bitter and irrational comments.

Using caveman era standards that provide no context, the Titans D was ranked 5th last year and looking to improve on that ranking, according to the Tennessean. However a closer and smarter analysis shows they were the tops last year, which I guess means they were double first place while Albert was healthy...

Hang on, those same smart stat guys predict that we'll bomb this year? Those idiots can make numbers say anything! Stats are worthless!!!! Note: They also have been touting the Texans as a wildcard-or-near-wildcard team... I'm a much bigger beliver in stats as analysis for why things happened, than what will happen, especially in the NFL where the sample size in miniscule.

I'd like to extend a special finger to Roger Godell for needlessly urinating on Ryan Fowlers reputation, then backing off because there was never any reasonable evidence. Jerk.

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Dan Patrick just said

the Titans have the worst uniforms in the NFL. Not cool Dan.

Titans Blogger at Music City Miracles

by Jimmy on Sep 4, 2008 10:13 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs

What?!?!

Worse than the Bengals?!?! The Browns?!?! The Seahawks?!?! He can’t possibly be serious.

by theologic on Sep 4, 2008 10:22 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Our uniforms are awesome.

I guess Whitlock was right about him not knowing enough about football!

Michael Roos doesn't eat pitas because NOTHING BREAKS THE POCKET ON HIS WATCH!!!

by August West on Sep 4, 2008 10:56 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Y'know, the strangest thing ever about that FO article was...

…unless I totally misunderstood it, it looked like they said the team’s Offense would be almost as good as it’s Defense. In fact, though the D’s DVOA is better, its actual rank is WORSE. Moreover, they have the Offense at +.6—slightly better than average (say what?)—and the D at 3, still only slightly better than average. Then, with horrid Special Teams and a tough schedule, that’s enough to knock the Titans’ W-Wins to around 7.

Now look, I think 7 wins could happen. I don’t want it to, but you have to score points. Even if your D holds the other guy to an average score of 3 pts/game, he’ll still win if you score ZERO. And while I hope this team can score TDs, I mean, we all saw the pre-season. It could happen that they are just a really, really terrible Offense. As Jimmy said, they could probably win 8 games without throwing a pass, and honestly that might be what happens.

BUT I just cannot believe that the D’s rank will be below the Top 10 at all. Not unless they’re predicting Big Al gets hurt or something.

DannoE

Go read FRIDAY MAD SCIENCE at www.paperbackreader.com
Go Titans!

by DannoE on Sep 4, 2008 12:15 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

If we don't win at minimum 8 there better be a ton of injuries piling up....

but you make a lot of good points…

Michael Roos doesn't eat pitas because NOTHING BREAKS THE POCKET ON HIS WATCH!!!

by August West on Sep 4, 2008 12:26 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

7 wins seems low to me. Not unreasonable given some disaster scenarios, but possible.

And yeah, if the team underperforms at that level, then I’m all for some more heat.

DannoE

Go read FRIDAY MAD SCIENCE at www.paperbackreader.com
Go Titans!

by DannoE on Sep 4, 2008 1:13 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

It's kind of confusing

Negative DVOA is good for defense
Positive DVOA is good for offense

So a DVOA of 0.6 on offense is slightly above mediocre.

Also, yesterday they posted an article saying that they’ve revised their DVOA projections for the season, and Denver is now one of the wildcard picks instead of Houston.

They predict Houston to go 7-9; the Titans predicted to go 6-10.

If I hit a hole-in-one on this grand slam the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

by jasonkylebates on Sep 4, 2008 2:02 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

also

The Titans defensive DVOA last year, though it was the best in the league, it was the worst league-leading DVOA of the years that have data.

If I hit a hole-in-one on this grand slam the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

by jasonkylebates on Sep 4, 2008 2:13 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Re: the Texans bit, that's the updated DVOA is what I linked.

I just wanted to throw the Texans bit in there because they’ve been saying it for a while now…

Michael Roos doesn't eat pitas because NOTHING BREAKS THE POCKET ON HIS WATCH!!!

by August West on Sep 4, 2008 2:36 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

In that case, then I TOTALLY disagree.

Because that means that they have the Offense being considerably BETTER than the Defense, and that just ain’t true at all. But they have the D ranked at 19 with 3, which is bad if -3 would be better.

I suppose that’s on the strength of opposing schedules more than anything else, but I still find it a bit far-fetched. I mean, this same group played these same guys last year, and it wasn’t like that at all.

DannoE

Go read FRIDAY MAD SCIENCE at www.paperbackreader.com
Go Titans!

by DannoE on Sep 4, 2008 2:46 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ring of Honor and Titan Uniforms

It’s strange to me that you guys think it’s funny that Houston fans are disgusted by Bud Adams’ continued spitting in the face of the old Oiler fans. You just have no idea yet. You’re not far enough into his reign.

Bud will probably kick before it gets that bad for you, but until you have a pro football team with 30+ years of culture ripped away from you… the Luv Ya Blue years, the Run’n Shoot era, etc – you just can’t understand. We didn’t win championships, but we had some good playoff runs and some very passionate fans, of which I was one. We had season tickets from 90-93, and I even attended the infamous Buffalo road loss. When football is as big of a deal as it is to me – it becomes personal when Bud does the things he does.

As far as the uniforms – you know, I don’t care much for the LOGO, but I never had a problem with the Titan uniforms. Like someone said above – NOBODY will have the worst uni in the league as long as the Bengals are still around. Gah, those are disgusting. Also – not a fan of the Seahawks or Ravens unis. The Titans are in the top half, IMO.

Chris – www.HoustonDiehards.com

by HoustonDiehards on Sep 4, 2008 1:15 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Sorry if I offended

Michael Roos doesn't eat pitas because NOTHING BREAKS THE POCKET ON HIS WATCH!!!

by August West on Sep 4, 2008 1:35 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Hmmm

I think Del Rio can shut up. What about the Eagles throwbacks? Man those are the ugliest unis in football period next to the Oregon Ducks.

Analysts need to let the season start before they start analyzing. It’s irritating already hearing the Titans are going to go 6-10 when they haven’t even taken a snap.

Let's go Titans!!

by gzablue on Sep 5, 2008 2:09 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs