Bye Week

My internal promise to blog once a day for a month lasted about 24 hours into my vacation. I apologize to my three readers. I highly recommend the Vegas/Sedona/Grand Canyon trio. You get to see nature at her best and humanity at its most entertaining. I won $18.55 on Missouri -3.5 against Texas Tech. Some day I'll figure out the mathematics of the sports book. At the blackjack table, if I bet five bucks and win, I get five bucks. If I bet five bucks at the sports book, I win about $4.60. I'm happy to think that I helped finance one or two of the billions of light bulbs in town.

I am so happy for the hype machine this week. Generally I'd be annoyed by the "dynasty in turmoil" show one day after A-Rod opted out of his contract with the Yankees. Most of the time I'd think that the Colts/Patriot talk is over the top. Next year, who's going to remember a regular season game? If you do, that means your team fell short of championship glory. Even though Vince Young has a (Archie) Manning-esque 2-1 interception to touchdown ratio, I can't complain about the Titans at 5-2. The media do not care about my team. Good.

Jeff Fisher has an aversion to winning big. The Titans nearly blew a 25-point lead last week, and I think it mainly had to do with Fisher liking close games. The Titans should have won by double digits yesterday. Instead, Ben Troupe and Roydell Williams dropped easy touchdowns and the result was in doubt until the final minute. I find it ironic that Mike Williams, the guy Norm Chow wanted three years ago in the draft, was the guy who dropped the fourth down pass. LenDale White looks great, now that it looks like Chris Brown is back to his inactive ways. Young could be limited for the rest of the year, and that is a problem. The Titans should win nine or ten games, but with a fully healed Young, they might be able to pull off 12. It's not going to be good enough in any measure for more than a Wild Card date in Pittsburgh or San Diego. I don't mind, because even Tom Brady circa last year would look at Young's wideouts and say "dude, I pity you."

Experts say that the Titans didn't do enough to improve their offense in the offseason. Funny, no one's talking about the defense, with no new players yet markedly better than last year, and that's with Pac Man off the board. Maybe Brandon Jones will come back and prove to be a difference-maker. Then again, maybe it's going to take a key defensive takeaway every other week to lead the team to victory. I'm going to take it that the team is relatively young and should only get better as the year progresses. I'll forget that the hype-meisters want me to think that there are two teams in the NFL. If those teams were so important, Roger Goddell would have sent them to London.