Go West, young Titans-Team heading to San Diego early

They will fly out Saturday morning, arrive in San Diego in time for lunch followed by a walkthrough. Usually, the Titans hold their walkthrough in Nashville before heading to the airport.

‘We’ve changed our schedule back and forth with West coast trips,’ Fisher said.

‘I think we’ve got a workable schedule, a convenient schedule that we’re using. I think the difficulty of the games and such is that we’ve played pretty good teams recently. But I like the way we travel when we go to the West Coast.’

The Titans have lost their last two trips to San Diego, losing by scores of 40-7 and 38-17. They lost 24-22 in 1999 in a game at San Francisco and are 0-for-4 in Oakland, counting the 2003 AFC championship game, since a 13-10 win there on Dec. 22, 2001.

Fisher said he thinks it’s tougher for teams to travel from out west to the east with players having to play games when it feels like morning. The Titans will kick off Sunday at what feels like 3:30 p.m. to them.

Norv Turner brought his Chargers to Nashville on Friday last month to give them extra time to adjust to the time difference. But he nobody really worries about the travel involved when it’s playoff time.

‘The fact that we’re at home, the benefit for us is obviously our crowd, the emotion our crowd will bring to the game. We won’t have to handle the crowd noise ourselves in terms of offensively,’ he said.

‘Other than that, I don’t know that anyone cares about having to travel to play in one of these games.’

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RAIN IN CALIFORNIA?: The Titans practiced indoors Wednesday with the temperature around 24 degrees and a wind chill of 14 when they started. If the weather forecast stands for San Diego, they might not find weather too different from what Nashville will have on Sunday.

The extended forecast calls for showers and temperatures in the mid-50s for Sunday. Coach Jeff Fisher always monitors the forecast so his team will be ready for the game-time conditions, and he said he has a plan to prep in case it rains.

‘We’ll have a couple wet-ball periods to prepare our quarterbacks and receivers. … You just go out and you deal with it,’ he said.

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GRAYBEARD COLLINS: Coming off the bench and helping the Titans clinch their first playoff berth since 2003 has fans saying that perhaps Kerry Collins should start the wild-card game with San Diego.

That isn’t all the talk about Collins.

‘I’ve heard more comments on my gray beard the last two, three days than I can remember,’ he said Wednesday. ‘You know it’s kind of the end of the year. It’s cold, and a little facial hair is kind of called for.’

Collins helped the Titans win on his 35th birthday. And he’s not looking for a gig promoting any hair color products.

‘I mean there’s so much character going on in there. I mean it’s just, I’m all natural,’ he said.

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RECOMMENDATIONS: San Diego coach Norv Turner deserves some credit for Kerry Collins being on the Titans’ roster. He talked to both Collins and the Titans about the quarterback when Tennessee went looking for a veteran before the 2006 season.

‘I had some people that were calling me about Kerry,’ Turner said Wednesday during a conference call with Tennessee reporters.

‘And I thought that for Kerry, it was a good situation. Jeff (Fisher) and I go way back. I’ve got a lot of respect for what Jeff does, how he operates, and what he’s done as a coach. It would be a great opportunity to play for someone like him.’

Turner has known Fisher since the Titans coach was a defensive back at Southern California when Turner was an assistant coach. Turner coached Fisher during his final season with the Trojans.