At this point, it's easier to come up with rationale for the first two examples than the third. Smoking cigarettes and throwing my wet towel on my bed actually feel good to some extent. They calm me down and make me feel like a bad boy. They're not great for my health or my mattress, but at some point it's like whatever. I am going to live forever.

Marcus Mariota has his problems on the field and staying healthy, that cannot be denied. However, you also can't deny that the dude can flat-out ball in competitive situations. This is a contract year. Tennessee wants you, Marcus. We love believing in you. This is a big year, and I know Mariota is not going to let us down.

In year two of Vrabel's head coaching effort, it gives me a lot of confidence that this team can make the leap. Plus, all your favorite members of the Titans are back (including Delanie freakin' Walker who has been speaking the truth before the first game), and they've added some terrific talent from around the country (Rodger Saffold, Adam Humphries, A.J. Brown, and Cameron Wake to name a few who will be ready week 1). The Titans have never had a group of wide receivers this strong in the years I have been watching them.

I really like that Arthur Smith had been around the organization for 5 years before getting promoted to the offensive coordinator job. This offense has had 4 new OCs in the past 5 years, so it is nice that they put someone in charge who can pull the best aspects from all of the different philosophies they've employed.

One of my favorite quotes this week was from Mariota when asked to compare Matt LaFleur to Smith: “Art and Matt are completely different people. Art doesn’t try to put you in a box.” Holy shit. That's kind of a shot, Marcus. A little bit feisty. Good for you, dude. I like it. After my optimism at the beginning of last year wore off, I talked so much trash about Matt LaFleur, and I feel vindicated after he laid an egg in Chicago on the offensive side of the ball to open up the season as a head coach in Green Bay. During that game on Thursday, the sideline reporter kept saying that Matt LaFleur wanted to run the ball more. Why? You have Aaron Rodgers and Devante Adams.

But Justin, you might say, they were up against the best defense in the league and in the end they still won the game.

While both of those statements are true, I would like to point out that this same Packers team put up 24 points and 17 points against this same defense last year on separate occasions, once where Aaron Rodgers finished the game on one leg and another where Joe Philbin was their interim coach. Packers fans, I am sorry that you have to endure LaFleur in even a higher status position than I did. You are more than welcome to join me in fading your team every week.

These last two bullets are all to say: welcome Arthur Smith! I am very optimistic about your offense where you don't put Mariota in a box and I can't wait for all the FedEx puns the media comes up with when the offense begins to gel.

I could go on (and I might later! Don't count me out!). As someone who consumes an unhealthy amount of sports media, these are all thoughts I have been internalizing and externalizing (much to the annoyance of my friends and the people on the other end of the drive-thru speaker that are too polite to tell me to stop). The start of the season is close, and I cannot wait for my thoughts to be validated or invalidated, then have more takeaways to replace with the takeaways I took back.





We're not going to have a full flavor profile of the season after the first game in Cleveland, but we're going to have a taste. As far as the actual match-up goes, I can't decide how I feel. Their pass rush scares me, but their secondary does not. I think the Titans will actually be able to expose them a little bit in the run game, especially with short throws to Dion Lewis and some Derrick Henry runs from the outside. I may talk about it more tomorrow.





Until then, see you soon.





Believing that this is the year for the Titans only makes me feel good until Week X of the NFL season when reality sits in. Week X is usually somewhere around weeks 1 thru 6 and you realize that there are 11 more weeks of the season to go. All of a sudden in Week X the path to an even .500 seems muddled and we start seeing headlines like these:(we're already seeing the seeds of this one being planted...it pains me to type it). Then, all of a sudden it's week 15 of the season and the Titans are 7-7, and miraculously they win their next two games. Boom--we're at 9-7, baby! And because the (insert middling AFC team) beat (insert AFC team on the playoff cusp) later that afternoon, the Titans lose out on the Wild Card seed to the Colts. The cycle continues.The offseason then starts early, and the pressing questions about what the Titans are going to do at quarterback start again: who are they going to take with their mid-first round pick, what splashes will they make in free agency ("splash" is actually too big of a word to describe the Titans in free agency...let's say "ripples"), what kind of offense will they run next year, how long will the defense keep carrying the team, and so on and so forth. We're in for another eight months of waiting to get all of these questions answered.Is there any reason to believe that this year will be different and we will avoid this cycle?Why, yes. I do not want to get too ahead of myself, but I believe that there is. Here are some cherry picked facts (fact: they're actually opinions) to prove my case: