Mailbag: What might be different for the Titans against the Colts

Greetings. Hope you made it through the rain at Nissan Stadium if you made it to the Titans’ practice. I enjoyed the big trip to Canton for Pro Football Hall of Fame festivities.

I’ll be all plugged back in on Monday and ready to see what unfolds in preseason game No. 1 Thursday night. In the meantime, I spent some time with the best of your questions.

TitanUpFlagPK: Keeping the ball longer on offense and scoring more are two big keys. The Titans lost 38-10 and 33-17 last year. They may have a great defense, but odds are they are going to have to be in the 20s to beat Indy.

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CANTON, Ohio – In a stirring speech during which he gave comprehensive thanks to those who helped him arrive here, Kevin Mawae stood beside his bronze bust and began the chapter of his life during which he will be introduced as a Pro Football Hall of Famer.MawaeBust

I saw a group of Mawae supporters walking into Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium with one gentleman in green Jets’ jersey and another in his Titans’ blue 68.

Over 26 minutes and 50 seconds, he hit the speech out of the park, with lovely tributes to his parents, brothers, kids, in-laws and his wife, Tracy, who presented him. That included some tears as he remembered his brother John, who was killed in an alcohol-related car accident.

He paid tribute to the Hall of Famers he admires, to the coaches and teammates who helped lift him here – from his childhood teams to his final football stop with the Tennessee Titans -- and to all levels of staff that play a largely unseen role in helping a player succeed. 

Each of those Titans was mentioned, as were Alge Crumpler (who is also here) and Vince Young.

Ultimately, Mawae asked all his teammates from any stage of his career to stand.

“You are teammates, you are friends, you are my brothers,” he told them. “We did this. Kevin Mawae didn’t do this.” [Unlocked]

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CANTON, Ohio – All those cranes that are such a part of the Nashville skyline are not going to be part of building the Titans a football palace like the ones in Dallas and Atlanta or the ones going up in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk has said in the past she was not yet thinking about a new stadium even with Nissan Stadium’s lease set to expire following the 2029 season.NashvilleStadiumSkyline

In an interview with The Midday 180 on Friday during a pause in her day during meetings of the NFL’s Hall of Fame committee, she made her biggest pronouncement yet about Nashville’s stadium future, saying she wanted to put to rest any idea that she will be approaching the city seeking a new one.

“…I don’t want a new stadium,” she said. “But I do like The Hard Rock Stadium. That’s a very interesting model and one that we need to keep looking further at to make improvements. I’m all about making it the best stadium for our fans that I can without being ridiculous. Because at the end of the day the stadium doesn’t win football games.

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Bulked up coach's favorite David Fluellen ready for positional versatility

David Fluellen worked his way up to No. 3 running back last season and was in line for carries when coaches got frustrated with Derrick Henry in the win over New England.

He quickly suffered a knee injury, which derailed that.

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After the season, the plan was to bulk him up and increase his opportunities beyond special teams. So now, with Jonnu Smith out,  he's showing up in the move tight end role as an H-back and a F-back along with Ryan Hewitt.

He's also a headliner in Mike Vrabel's policy that the Titans will treat a player the way a player treats the team. WIse young newcomers would be wise to watch how he works and carries himself.

Here's my recent chat with Fluellen.

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CANTON, Ohio – As Jonathan Hutton and I made out way to Cleveland and then here yesterday, we talked about two years of PaulKuharsky.com and came to realize we were on the move on the two-year anniversary of the site.

PK.comLogo badge vintage HiRes 1The Midday 180 will visit with Kevin Mawae today as he approaches his enshrinement into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. For the second time in three years we will look to mingle with guys who are already wearing gold jackets and learn more about the game and the people in the game now from the best people to ever play it.

Camp started in 2017 before this site was up and running, and then I wrote for a while before the membership element was up and running. Once it was you guys jumped to show your support for an independent journalist on the team who works to offer second-level analysis, ask the tough questions while maintaining the important relationships and stays away from the predictable story of the day unless commenting on it feels necessary.

Here was the introductory post and here was the first really good post. [Unlocked]

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Still too early to be excited about Titans' wideouts

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Every year at this early stage of training camp, there is some degree of excitement about the Titans’ receivers.

And every year we look back at this time and recall how naïve we were and how unwarranted it was. The franchise has a long history of being insufficient at the position and unable to fix it.Davispodium

And like with the Titans inability to beat the Colts, it’s a lot safer to expect the same and be surprised by a change than to predict this is the time when it’s going to change.

So let’s keep that context in mind as we review where things currently stand among a group that will go a long way toward determining whether the Titans can make a jump from good to great.

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Titans' coaching and administrative staff has grown 74 percent in 10 years

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – There is a new kitchen at the Titans facility, but no one who works in it is listed as a fulltime team employee. Yet. And a fifth member of the public relations staff is soon to come aboard.2009frontoffice

The media guide the Titans put out as training camp got underway includes 177 employees who are not football players. I was struck by the long list on those pages and it prompted me to search out a sense of just how much the franchise has grown.

So, I dug up a 2009 media guide, from when the team still regularly published such a thing rather than sending out a digital version. And I counted up the people who were in the administrative section in there.

There were 102.

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NASHVILLE, Tenn.  -- As we plug back in on the podcast following four days of training camp, I look into Marcus Mariota's command, the blocking tight end role, Dion Lewis without Derrick Henry, Cameron Batson's chances, Rashaan Evans as a central piece of the defense and false accusations facing me and three boxes of donuts.

This free-for-all is free for all.

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You can find it on it on Apple Podcasts, Sticher, Spotify and TuneIn as well as directly through the Vokal website.

Also, feel free to listen on this page by heading below the line. [Unlocked]

You can find the history of this site's podcasts right here.

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