Toss Up: Which Team is Sinking Faster?

I know I said I'd start this series sooner, but Graduate School applications, finding employment and general holiday tomfoolery ate up a bunch of the time I set aside for blogging. For the first installment, I've decided to compare the relative hopelessness of what two formerly great  franchises... well, one formerly great franchise and one formerly pretty good franchise: the Denver Broncos and the Tennessee Titans.

Interesting Fact: The Broncos used to be one of my favorite teams, until they hired Josh McDaniels. Then the Titans filled the void. Also, it's worth pointing out that my one of my other favorite teams is the equally hopeless Carolina Panthers. So maybe I'm the problem. But I digress.

Toss Up: Which Team is Sinking Faster: the Denver Broncos or the Tennessee Titans?



On the one hand, you have the Denver Broncos, who are coming off the worst season in franchise history. To add insult to injury, the Broncos let their former head coach, Josh McDaniels, dismantle the foundations of what could've been a truly great offense. Most famously, they traded away Jay Cutler, who is a win away from the Super Bowl, for Kyle Orton, who is a seat away from the Gatorade cooler on the bench. Then, they traded away Pro Bowl wide receiver and professional giant-atop-a-beanstalk Brandon Marshall for a second round draft pick. Thanks to the complicated magic of NFL trades, that draft pick was about half of what Denver gave up to Baltimore in order to draft Tim Tebow. Then, worst of all, they traded away superstar-in-waiting Peyton Hillis for alleged football talent Brady Quinn. Just to give you an idea of the magnitude of the suckiness of this deal: Peyton Hillis was 6th in the league in rushing touchdowns and 11th in the league in rushing yards; Brady Quinn never actuallty went on the field this year. In fact, Quinn looks at Orton with envy, yearning for the day that he might sit adjacent to the cooler instead of in the dungeon complex located beneath Mile High Stadium.

To summarize, the Broncos traded away a star quarterback, wide receiver, and running back in order to get two and a half quarterbacks (who themselves have the talent of half a quarterback combined). Throw in the league's worst defense in both yards per game and total points, and the Broncos franchise is wasting away in Margaritaville. Yes, they are searching for their lost shaker of salt, by which I mean "dignity". Some people say that there's a woman to blame, but they know its nobody's fault.

However, I do not think the Broncos are sinking the faster than the Titans. For starters, Denver has already reached rock bottom (at least as far as Broncos history is concerned). Next, Denver fans can say "la la la John Elway la la la" and remember their two Super Bowl championships until the bad times go away, whereas the Titans' fans can only relive that one time when they were one yard away from tying the Super Bowl. Finally, the Broncos have an iota of hope at quarterback in Tim Tebow, whereas the Titans have a giant black hole at the position which sucks all hope out of the area and turns it into despair and interceptions.

At a glance, things don't seem too terrible for the Titans. After all, they have the longest tenured head coach, one of the best young running backs in the game, a highly reputable defense, and the third best field goal kicker in football. Superficially, it seems like the Titans could rebound if only they could get a decent quarterback. Sadly, that's like saying the Hindenburg doesn't seem nearly that flammable from the outside.

I've never been a strong believer in Jeff Fisher. While he's not a screw-up, he has no creativity and does nothing more than get a reasonable level of production from his players. He is consistently adequate, and I would expect more from the most tenured coach in the NFL. But Fisher fails to live up to adequacy when you consider the last seven years of his career. Fisher is 142-120 in his career, which translates to an average of 9-7. Five of the past seven seasons have been 8-8 or worse, which fails to live up the unimpressive bar Fisher sets for himself. The two seasons when the Titans did have winning were punctuated by losing immediately in the playoffs.

Furthermore, the Titans defense have fallen on hard times too. The Titans were in the middle of the pack (15th) when it came to points allowed, but were a disgraceful 26th when it came to yards allowed. Neither of those stats screw "power defense". Luckily for the Titans, they did fire their defensive coordinator just moments before this blog began. Whoever takes the job will have an uphill battle since they will play two Top 5 offense twice a year each.

Finally, we have the two unbelmished bright spots on the Titans: Chris Johnson and Rob Bironas. After all, Chris Johnson is just one season removed from being the most dominant back in football and was still a top 10 running back this year, despite all the inconsistency at quarterback. Surely, the relative stability of Kerry Collins' unimpressiveness can only help Chris Johnson. If you replace "Chris Johnson" with "DeAngelo Williams/Johnathan Stewart" and "Kerry Collins" with "Matt Moore", then you have the rationale behind the 2-14 Carolina Panthers.

Well, at least Rob Bironas is still around...

ANSWER: Titans

P.S. I just learned how to insert page breaks onto the front page. Hopefully, this means the scroll bar will actually be useful on the front page, rather than a monument to my loquacity.