Just when you thought Peter King set the bar at an all-time low for NFL analysis, Mike Florio rides in to remind you just who is the unfit daddy of lazy armchair analysis:
27. Titans: For a team that had the same head coach for 17 years, too much is changing, too quickly.
Before we get into the Titans' actual spot in the rankings, can we juts take a minute to ponder what Florio said there? Just because Fisher was here for a long time, does he think things should stay the same now that he's fly fishing in Montana all fall? The system was broken. That's the whole reason Jeff Fisher didn't get 18 years, despite the fact that the owner and the community where clearly on his side. His player-friendly style had gotten lax, and the philosophies on both sides of the ball weren't winning anymore. So if the culture is bad, the system is lackluster and the roster inadequate, why shouldn't some major pieces of the pie change?
Plus, how many teams go through this kind of transition and still tout two book-end tackles that any team would kill to have, the best running back in the NFL, a secondary with multiple recent Pro Bowl appearances scattered about, a veteran QB who has led a team to a Super Bowl, a rookie QB with loads of talent who impressed in the preseason, and promising young depth at every single position group?
So assuming Florio put down the glue he's been huffing long enough to take note of just 10% of those facts, there's no way we'd be stuck behind the Browns, 49ers, Bills, Cardinals and Jaguars. I'm not saying we're top 10, but we're certainly more talented than any of those teams for 2011.
We used to think that Florio just had it in for Vince Young, but maybe he has it in for the whole franchise. Either that or this was just a lazily put together troll whistle. Having read PFT for years now, I'm guessing it's a little of both, but more so the latter than the former.