Chris Johnson looked a lot more like the Chris Johnson we know and love on Sunday, thanks largely to a drastic improvement in play calling. CJ2K used his winning TD leap to pay homage to another NFL great by legally replicating his famous celebration in Cowboy's Stadium: going Christ-pose on the Star.
Eugene Amano is fine after being missing the last drive of the game with a bad stinger. He should be good to practice all week and take back over the center job against Jacksonville on Monday night. Amano had one of his better games of the season in Dallas, and hopefully that's indicative of him getting more comfortable in the middle of that O-line.
With neither team playing tomorrow night an obvious threat to eclipse us, the Titans look safe to enter week 6's Monday night match-up still leading the league in sacks with 22. It's not much of a coincidence that we're also tied for 5th in interceptions as a result of all that pressure. About the only thing not to like is that we're giving up 26.4 points per game. About the only thing not to love is that we're 10th in the league with 19 points given up per game. That number should come down as we face less pass-only teams like the Giants, Broncos and Cowboys in the next few weeks. Philly and San Diego throw it around a lot, but I doubt you see 45+ passing attempts per game like we've been seeing the past three weeks.
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Kenny Britt knows why we won:
"We opened up the playbook and threw the ball around, and those plays we made throwing the ball around really helped us out.
Can't say enough about the contributions of this year's rookie class to that win, especially Alterraun Verner and Marc Mariani with a few nice catches by Damian Willams sprinkled in for taste.
Marc Mariani, Dave Ball, Cortland Finnegan, Eugene Amano, Tony Brown, Bo Scaife... does any team get more out of the end of their draft and undrafted free agents than we do? I submit the answer is no.
I heart Chuck Cecil so, so much.
Memo to future opponents, don't go on TV bragging about how good your pass protection has been when we're coming to your town:
"We saw him on TV talking about he’d thrown 120 passes and had hardly been touched,’’ defensive end Jason Babin said. "He was kind of throwing it out there like, ‘I dare you.’ Well, I know what we are capable of.’’
Football Outsiders chronicled parts of the game in their email-commentary piece, and they noticed the same thing a lot of us noticed: nothing good was going to come of putting Verner in the nickel spot instead of Fuller while that made Mouton actually have to play cornerback. Ryan Mouton is the new Renaldo Hill because he's always right there in coverage, but always manages to do something terrible with every opportunity. Still, I always love it when people recognize how badass my boy Jason Jones is:
Aaron Schatz: The Titans defensive improvement this year is for real. That pass rush is for real. Jason Jones in particular is for real, playing very well again today.
Peter King credits Jeff Fisher, whether he does or (more likely) doesn't realize it, with getting the offense out of it's own way by returning to the run/pass formula that worked wonders last year:
f. Jeff Fisher, who was right. Chris Johnson will be just fine, as a 19-for-131 day showed.
You know you got dominated when you get fired/demoted after a game... just ask Dallas guard Leonard Davis, who has gone from three straight Pro Bowls to hanging on by a thread after we came to town.
Also, you can add Wade Phillips to that list of guys who's job security got hit harder than Tony Romo yesterday.
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