Tennessee Titans, As Usual, Get No Love In The Pre-Season Rankings
By Jason Peters
The Tennessee Titans are a team that continually gets overlooked, both before the season and throughout. Granted, we’re by no means a powerhouse at this stage in the game, but I do think that we deserve to be towards the middle to upper-middle of rankings, especially coming off a winning season (there were so few of those during the Fisher era; Master of the 8-8, he was) that saw a rookie HC, OC, & DC take the helm, not to mention all of our rookie starters by the end of the season.
It would seem, however, that the masterminds behind the power rankings at the “esteemed” publications such as Yahoo and ESPN disagree with me on this point. There are a lot of publications out there, but since these are the biggest, we’ll look at these two.
"ESPN.com: Rank 18 – “They added a receiver and a tight end who can expand the passing offense, but they didn’t do much to address the interior line questions or the pass rush. (Kuharsjy)”"
This ranking actually isn’t terribly off from where it should be, but I do feel it’s a tad low. For starters, the Titans were the last non-playoff team to select in the draft. This means that they also had the best non-playoff record in the league, having them finish the season ranked #13. We didn’t lose anyone of value, the coaching staff now all have a year under their belt, and both sides of the ball look to introduce more exotic packages for the upcoming season. Why, then, drop them 5 spots, especially with Wright being added to the offense?
"Yahoo.com: Rank 23 – “After NFL Network analyst Mike Mayock described second-round pick Zach Brown as “allergic to contact“, how awesome would it have been to see Brown fly across the set at Radio City Music Hall, slam Mayock into the orchestra pit and yell “Gesundheit”?”"
Mike Silver may think he’s being cute with his comments, but dropping us ten spots from where we finished the season? The most offensive part of these rankings is the fact that he has the St. Louis Rams (The Rams!) ahead of us one spot at 22. Are you kidding me? The Rams were literally the worst team in the league last year, or tied for it anyways. Granted, the Rams did have an impressive draft, but we know it’s rather atypical for a rookie draft class to make that immediate of an impact. As a matter of fact, there’s only one team I can think if in the last year that featured four rookie starters on defense and had a winning record. Who could they be, I wonder?
So let the disrespect continue. As a franchise, we do better flying under the radar anyways. We’ll continue to make strides on both offense and defense, see CJ bounce back to at least 1.5 status, and we’ll see you guys in the playoffs.
Update: The links to the original rankings can be found here for ESPN and here for Yahoo
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