Titans face off vs. division rivals

Coming off identical 8-8 finishes, the AFC South rivals look to improve upon inconsistent seasons when they open the season against each other at Jacksonville on Sunday.

The Titans were one of the NFL’s best teams down the stretch last year, winning six consecutive games before a Week 17 loss to New England officially eliminated them from postseason contention. Tennessee, which lost its first five games of the year, couldn’t completely recover from the franchise’s longest losing streak to start a season since the Houston Oilers dropped their first 10 games in 1984.

‘Our goal is to improve the number of wins,’ said the Titans’ Jeff Fisher, the longest-tenured coach in the league entering his 13th season.

Some of the early struggles were solved when rookie Vince Young got more comfortable as the starting quarterback after opening the season on the bench. Young, the offensive rookie of the year, had a 54.8 passer rating during Tennessee’s 2-7 start and a 78.2 rating during its 6-1 finish.

‘The guys are more experienced than we had last year, and I think the guys understand what we’re trying to accomplish,’ center Kevin Mawae said. ‘Are we going to start off 6-0 instead of 0-6, whatever it was last year, I can’t say that. I don’t know.

‘I think we’ll have a much better showing than we did last year.’

Jacksonville’s struggles weren’t due to a slow start, but rather to the Jaguars’ poor play against losing teams. The Jaguars won seven of their 11 games against teams that finished at .500 or better, including a convincing 44-17 win over eventual Super Bowl champion Indianapolis on Dec. 10. But they went just 1-4 against teams that finished with losing records.

‘The purpose that we’re working toward is to be the most explosive football team in the NFL. You don’t do that by playing up one week and down the next. You do that by playing up every week,’ Jacksonville coach Jack Del Rio said. ‘The team that executes is the team that wins in this league, and the team that executes with urgency wins more often.’

The search for stability in Jacksonville took an unexpected turn on Saturday, when the team released incumbent starting quarterback Byron Leftwich. Leftwich had struggled through four injury-plagued seasons with the Jaguars since they made him the seventh overall selection in the 2003 draft.

David Garrard, the Jaguars’ backup quarterback for the past five years, has been named the starter for Sunday. He completed 60.2 percent of his passes for 1,735 yards, 10 touchdowns and nine interceptions in 11 games ‘ 10 starts ‘ in 2006, while Leftwich was sidelined by an ankle injury. He’s 10-8 as a starter in his career.

‘I believe David is our guy,’ Del Rio said. ‘He’s proven to be a playmaker for us. He can be a threat both throwing and running it. We believe he’s really improved during this offseason, and I feel he’s earned this opportunity.’

‘He has a quick release, good feet and really has done a nice job of taking his game to another level.’

The Titans are confident they have their quarterback of the future in Young, but their offense has also undergone an overhaul after the departures of leading rusher Travis Henry and leading receivers Drew Bennett and Bobby Wade.

Second-year running back LenDale White will get a heavy workload as the Titans try to maintain a running game that ranked fifth in the league with 138.4 yards per game last year.

‘We want to come out Week 1 to Week 16 and through the playoffs to have a great, dominant running game,’ said White, who had 244 rushing yards as a reserve in 2006. ‘I don’t think we’ll drop off. We’ve been working hard and the way we’ll win games is to take pressure off Vince. We have to run hard.’

Establishing that running game could be a challenge against a Jacksonville defense that ranked second overall in the league in 2006. The Jaguars gave up only 296.1 total yards per game last year, while the Titans allowed a league-high 378.9. That could be good news for Jacksonville’s Maurice Jones-Drew, who led all NFL running backs with 5.7 yards per carry last season.

These teams split their head-to-head matchups last year. Jacksonville beat Tennessee 37-7 at home on Nov. 5, but lost 24-17 in Nashville on Dec. 17 ‘ just one week after clobbering the Colts. The Titans have lost both of their games in Jacksonville since an 18-15 victory Nov. 21, 2004.

The Jaguars, meanwhile, have won three straight season openers and went 6-2 at Jacksonville Municipal Stadium in 2006.