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One big question mark Titans remain biggest mystery in NFL playoffs
Posted: Thursday January 20, 2000 12:34 PM
By John Donovan, CNNSI.com NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- We know the St. Louis Rams and their chuck-it-up offense. We know the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' wall of a defense. We even have an inkling about the Jacksonville Jaguars and their boot-camp sergeant of a coach, Tom Coughlin. But does anyone really know just who the heck these Tennessee Titans are? The Freak? The Beast? Fire and Ice? The Tennessee Titans remain the biggest mystery in the NFL playoffs. "I think that's the key to us," says wide receiver Kevin Dyson. "You just don't know what you're going to get." Jevon Kearse, aka the Freak, may be the only non-mystery on the team. He's been in the local paper more than Peanuts, and he's grabbed a good-sized national following, too. The sensational defensive end, voted into the Pro Bowl in his first year, has turned a decent defense into a feared one. Opponents certainly know who he is. Still, he jokes about starting a line of "Freakwear" to pump up his image, complete with a cologne so kids can "smell like the Freak." And he's still smarting that 15 other teams overlooked him before the Titans snapped him up in April's draft. Most football followers know Eddie George (the Beast), too. The monstrously strong running back is the main weapon of Tennessee's offense and is clearly one of the best backs in the NFL. Sharp dresser, big, durable, quiet in public, outspoken with his teammates, loves his Mom -- George will be the first to admit that he hasn't yet made the impact of someone like Denver's Terrell Davis. "I was just a back getting 1,300 yards a season," he says. Those two guys, and perhaps quarterback Steve "I-used-to-be-called Air" McNair, are the headliners on the Titans. After that, the star power starts to drop considerably. But the lack of big names isn't all that has kept the Titans in relative anonymity. The small-town feeling of the city in which they play, and the fact they wandered around for years after leaving Houston (they used to be the Oilers, remember?) has hurt them in the national consciousness. Three straight forgettable 8-8 seasons didn't help, either. It wasn't until the Titans pulled off one miracle (the Music City Miracle, Dyson's 75-yard kickoff return in the Titans' playoff win over Buffalo) and one stunning upset (their three-point win over the heavily favored Colts last weekend in Indianapolis) that people really started noticing this team. Now, the Titans -- hey, they went 13-3 in the regular season -- face the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC Championship on Sunday at Alltel Stadium in Jacksonville. The Titans already have beaten Jacksonville twice this season. But the Titans are, no surprise, underdogs again. The crush of media that has descended upon Nashville this week still doesn't know quite what to make of a team that even its general manager has called "goofy" at times. Are the Titans really as good as they showed against the Colts? Can they beat the Jaguars -- whose only two losses came to the Titans -- a third time? And, really -- how the heck are they doing it? "This team knows how to win. That's the only way I know how to put it," says Marcus Robertson, the Titans' free safety. He's "Ice" to strong safety Blaine Bishop's "Fire," at least in the press. "It's just that simple. We find a way to win." Analysts can dig out lots of statistics to pin down the reason for the Titans' success, but maybe the key statistic is in the turnover table: Only one team, the Kansas City Chiefs, was better than the Titans in takeaways-to-giveaways this season. The defense forced the ball away from opponents 40 times, including a league-high 24 forced (and recovered) fumbles. The offense gave it away only 22 times, the second-best mark in the league. This is an opportunistic team that simply does not beat itself. "Overachievers. That's what I think," says cornerback Samari Rolle, who shut down such big-time receivers as Oakland's Tim Brown and Indy's Marvin Harrison this season. "We don't have a lot of big-name guys. "A lot of teams laugh at us. [ESPN anchor] Chris Berman calls us the 'Tennessee Tuxedoes,' or people are on us about our logo or our name. We just laugh about it. "Everything we do isn't pretty. But we get the job done." Quietly, for sure. But if the Titans keep doing it, someone's going to have to take notice, sooner or later.
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