In today's column, Ryan and I will argue over which NFL team is the cream of the crop. If either of us knew what we're talking about earlier in the term, we should have been taken back to our columns in which we took a stab at predicting this year's Super Bowl-winner.
My pick, the Cowboys, have been riddled by injury after injury to a number of key players and are limping past the halfway mark in the 2008 season. I don't think the Cowboys are damned, necessarily, but their current position in the standings -- last in arguably the toughest division in football -- leaves them at long odds to be the team of destiny this year.
I must give Ryan credit. His pick, the Giants, are sitting pretty at 7-1 and they look like a team with a nice shot to repeat. Eli shows no signs of regressing after an emotional, career-changing run in the 2007 playoffs. The running game has benefitted a good deal from the emergence of Derrick Ward, who is nearly on pace to rush for 1,000 yards and has provided Brandon Jacobs with an excellent complement. To top things off, the defense and in particular, the pass rush, looks every bit as dominant as it did last season.
In rendering my decision, I had to swallow a good deal of pride. Allow me to explain: Prior to the open of this year's season, I stood as a decade-long Tennessee Titans fan. I made the decision prior to the season to pick a new team because, at the time, I didn't like the direction the franchise was going. Specifically, after singing his praises in the wake of his rookie year, I no longer believed in Vince Young.
In light of this, I do have to let myself off the hook at least a tad, seeing as Young is no longer the starting quarterback because of his shortcomings as a drop-back passer. Either way, it's pretty clear to me that the team I dumped as a fan prior to the start of the season is tops in the league thus far this season.
One need not look much further than the Titans' most recent first-round selection in the draft to find one of the key, if not the primary, reasons for their success. Much of the Titan fan base, me included at the time, was surprised and only mildly excited when the organization made the decision to draft Chris Johnson with the 24th overall pick. To many, though he was a burner (4.24 40-yard dash), he seemed unpolished and, what was worse, the product of a mid-major program. Johnson has resoundingly silenced all doubters thus far, and is the odds-on favorite to take home Rookie of the Year honors. Not only has Johnson been tremendously productive himself, ripping off big gains and running nicely between the tackles, he's also given Lendale White a boost, too.
Both need each other, no doubt, but it was obvious after last year that White desperately needed a complement to his bruising, punishing style which wore down defenses but could be assumed to never produce the big play. Johnson has provided just that and more, making White a higher percentage runner (four yards per carry jump) and the Titans running game one of the league's most formidable. There's no doubt that Johnson is the centerpiece of the Titans new offense and fills the critical role of 'playmaker' in an offense that has hurt for one in years past.
The emergence of quarterback Kerry Collins has served the offense very well, too, and though he's not impressive statistically, he profiles as the type of mistake-free, conservative quarterback with a big arm -- the opposite of Vince Young -- that a team with a stout defense and dominant running game like the Titans is best complemented with.
The defense is the backbone of the team's success as a whole, featuring one of the league's best front four. The unit ranks first in the league in points allowed and is a critical element in the offense's success.
Lastly, the team has Jeff Fisher as its coach. He's easily the longest-tenured coach in the league, having led the team for 15 years. Throughout his storied career, he's been hailed as a tremendous "player's coach" and he's never really had to deal with consistent threats to his job security. The high-point of Fisher's career to date has been leading an under talented 1999-2000 squad to an improbable Super Bowl appearance. The tools at his disposal are on the whole noticeably superior than the team from 2000, and I think it's safe to say at this point that if the Titans make it as far as the Super Bowl, they'll have plenty in them to "go that extra yard" this time around.
