Tennessee Titans Morning Links: Nobody Quit On These Links Edition

 the titans are getting paid back for the way steve’s career ended here.

They seem to have a little bad luck this year also, aaron smith out for season, troy p’s been injured most of it, and although they arent carrying a record like the titans, they arent playing like a team that will repeat. The titans are just terrible regardless of stepping on a yellow towel, with advertisements and the steelers logo.
Why didnt rod hood play in the patriots game?

I think they should bring pacman back also. Mind as well since the season seems to be through. Hes got to be better than mouton and mccourty playing the whole game, and although mark jones can catch kicksoffs and punts, that seems its all hes capable of. Did anyone see eddie royal last night?

Game 1: the Titans go out and play a great game on the road against the defending Super Bowl champs, holding them to 10 points in regulation. Collins kills a promising drive with an INT and fails to put points on the board. Fisher says it wasn’t Collins’ fault, everyone else has to play better.

Game 2: the Titans rebound from the tough loss and play extremely well against Houston. Chris Johnson has a record day running and catching the football, and the Titans shut down Houston’s rushing attack, resulting in a 21–7 lead. What happens? Collins has an INT deep in Titans territory that Houston turns into a TD on the next play, fumbles untouched when the Titans were driving for a game-tying or game winning drive, and fails to move the ball or put points on the board when he isn’t handing off or dumping it off to Johnson. The Titans hold the ball for only 25 minutes, and the Texans, have nothing but 3 and outs and 1 minute “drives” in the second half (except Johnson’s 91 yard run), and after giving chance after chance after chance in the second half, Houston FINALLY wins the game. And guess what? Fisher claims that Collins played fine, that a defense which was on the field THIRTY FIVE MINUTES INCLUDING TWENTY MINUTES IN THE SECOND HALF gave up the victory.

Game 3: the Titans play great, overcoming two more Collins turnovers (the guy has 11 on the year) and horrible miscues on special teams to get within 3. What happens? Collins ends the game 0–13. For the third week in a row, Fisher comes out, says Collins is playing fine, that the team lost because of, well, everybody else. This time, the usually pliant media (pliant because they want to keep Young on the bench as badly as Fisher was) had to actually do their jobs and ask about the 0–13. So, Fisher comes back the next day and claims that there were 5 drops.

1. In what universe is it ok for a veteran dropback passer to misfire on 8 throws late in a close game on the road? Fisher was holding the WRs accountable for dropping 5 passes but not Collins accountable for misfiring the other 8? And also, it wasn’t one WR who missed 5 balls. It was several, so the blame was spread around. BUT COLLINS ALONE THREW EIGHT BAD PASSES! At least according to Fisher. And Fisher was saying “that’s OK. Don’t blame Collins for throwing 8 bad passes. Blame the WRs for not catching the 5 good ones!”

2. Except that the idea that “there were 5 drops” is ridiculous. Most of those 5 “drops” were on poorly thrown balls and would have required catches of a high degree of difficulty. Sure, you can say “these guys are making millions of dollars, they should be able to catch the ball” but what about the $15 million dollar man Collins being able to deliver a ball accurately and on time?

It was right after Fisher came out and blamed the 0–13 on the WRs, not holding Collins accountable AT ALL, that the Titans went into the tank. They went from losing their first three games (2 of them on the road, all against teams that went 8–8 or better last year) by 3 points to being down 30–3 at halftime to JACKSONVILLE. A JACKSONVILLE team that released their top 3 WRs and #2 RB from last season, lost their #4 WR from last season to an injury, and had released yet another WR the prior week. A JACKSONVILLE team that was missing their starting OTs — both rookies incidentally — for the game. So this was a team basically BACKUPS and NOBODIES at WR and OL, AND THE TITANS GAVE UP 30 POINTS BY HALFTIME! Oh yeah, and that is on defense.

On offense, they only scored 3 points during the portion of the game that mattered (please ignore Collins’ TD pass and run against Jags backups) AGAINST A JACKSONVILLE DEFENSE THAT CAN’T RUSH THE PASSER, CAN’T DEFEND THE PASS, AND GAVE UP 41 POINTS THE NEXT WEEK! That’s right, Jacksonville is having many of the same problems on defense that Tennessee is this year. Both the DEs they drafted two years ago, Groves and Harvey, are busts. The Jags tried going to a 3–4 defense to help Groves and Harvey out and it still hasn’t worked. The difference: the Jags are playing hard and the Titans have quit. And that is the same difference between a Titans’ team that played hard the first 3 games and haven’t shown up since.

Come on out and tell the truth. The Titans QUIT after Jeff Fisher tried to blame the WRs for Kerry Collins’ ending the Jets game 0–13, costing the Titans a game that they should have won against a lesser team. (Yes, I feel confident in saying that BECAUSE THE JETS HAVEN’T WON SINCE! They are 0–3 since beating the Titans!)

And who can blame them? No matter how badly Collins played, Fisher was never going to hold him accountable. He was ALWAYS going to put the blame on somebody else. So why go out and fight to win when A) your QB is likely to lose you the game and B) if he does, your coach is going to blame YOU, who actually played well, instead of the QB?

This isn’t about whether the team things VY should be playing. I haven’t read where any of the current or former players say so. Instead, this is about Fisher hanging them out to dry in order to defend a QB who cost the Titans the 1st 3 games of the season with his turnovers, inaccuracy and ineffective play. Well if you hang your players out to dry, guess what happens? THEY DRY OUT!

Oh, and deactivating Jevon Kearse to play Dave Ball, who has 4.5 career sacks and is on his 3rd team in 5 years? And when Vanden Bosch, who actually plays the pass rushing position in this defense, has 0 sacks this year and only had 4.5 last year? Real nice message to send to the team that you hung out to dry. Basically shows that while Kearse doesn’t have a future with this team after this year, KVB still does despite only having had 2 good seasons since not only the Titans signed him in 2005, but in his entire NFL career. That’s what continuing to play Collins means too … that Fisher plans to keep Collins on after this year, but he is obviously planning to release Young. That’s why Fisher’s puppet GM, Mike Reinfeldt, moved so quickly to squash Young and his agent when they talked about redoing his deal, and none of Fisher’s puppets in the media have talked about how Young can redo his deal to stay in Nashville just like Alex Smith did the same in San Francisco last year. They want it to be said that they HAVE to cut Young because he is being paid too much to be a starter. Except that in order for that to happen, Collins has to still be around and still be starting. That’s why no matter how badly Collins plays, he is still going to start, because if he doesn’t then Fisher has no reason to claim that Young is this salary cap victim. If Young is the starting QB, then holding onto Collins next season as the backup making $8 million is ridiculous.)

But again, the players know this. They know that NO MATTER HOW BADLY COLLINS PLAYS, Fisher is going to keep him in the lineup and BLAME THEM when Collins plays badly. I think Collins knows the same. Collins is thinking “next year, Young will be off the team, and Fisher will go out and get help on defense, and we are going to be right back where we were in 2008.” And why shouldn’t he think that? But the players … do you think that they LIKE Collins being the guaranteed starter this year and next year NO MATTER HOW BADLY HE PLAYS?

So yeah, the Titans have quit. It is obvious. The only issue is that the media is not telling people WHY they have quit.

Says Titans probably go with Collins for a few more games.