What They're Saying: Phoenix Sportswriters

Staff Report November 30, 2009

After the Titans (5-6) snagged a suspenseful 20-17 victory from the defending NFC Champion Arizona Cardinals, Titans Radio flips throught the pages of Phoenix and other sportswriters for reaction following the thrilling last-second finish.

By Kent Somers, The Arizona Republic

TITANS TRIP CARDINALS ON LATE TD
There are various numbers that measure the Cardinals' pain after Sunday's loss to the Titans: 99 yards, three converted fourth downs, a 10-yard game-winning touchdown pass that came with zeroes on the clock.

The most-accurate gauge, however, was the silence in the locker room afterward. It was so quiet, you could almost hear the fan from a beverage cooler.

"You can tell by our locker room, it's crickets, because everybody's hurt," outside linebacker Clark Haggans said.

There were more storylines than aspiring country music stars in the Titans' 20-17 victory Sunday.

Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner sat out the game after experiencing sensitivity to light, a symptom of the concussion he suffered last week. With Warner watching in sweats, the obvious angle for Sunday's game was Cardinals backup Matt Leinart vs. Titans quarterback Vince Young, a reprisal of the 2006 Rose Bowl.

And guess what? Young repeated his role as star, taking the Titans 99 yards on 18 plays in the final 2:37. The Titans converted three times on fourth down, including Young's 10-yard pass to receiver Kenny Britt, who was crossing in the back of the end zone.

Several Cardinals hit Britt, a rookie, but he held on to the ball, taking a victory from the Cardinals (7-4).

"It's probably as close of a bad feeling as losing the Super Bowl," Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt said. "We knew that it was going to be difficult against this team, and our team rallied together. When you're six seconds away from winning it, it makes it even tougher."

That's how much time was left when the Titans snapped the ball on the final play. The Cardinals played a combination zone defense, which means the outside receivers were double-teamed by cornerbacks and safeties.

Young was flushed from the pocket by Cardinals defenders and threw hard to Britt in the back of the end zone.

"It was just one of those plays, a 50-50 chance, and they came down with it," Cardinals safety Antrel Rolle said. "Give Vince credit for staying calm and Britt, at the same time, for making the catch and being able to squeeze the ball, because we had guys hitting him from all angles."

The victory was the fifth in a row for the Titans (5-6) and kept them in playoff contention. It was the Cardinals' first road loss this season, and it snapped a three-game game winning streak. Their lead over the 49ers in the NFC West is down to two games.

"The important thing now is we can't let it affect us going forward," Whisenhunt said of Sunday's loss. "You have to tip your hat to the Titans, especially on that last drive."

By Dan Bickley, The Arizona Republic

CARDS AREN'T SAME MINUS QB WARNER
Football is a game of emotional roulette. One bounce can mean the difference between champagne toasts and antacid dinners.

So while you were throwing your remote control across the room, the Cardinals limped off the field in a dejected daze, the sound of hysteria burning their ears. Some 30 minutes later, Adrian Wilson was still slumped at his locker, refusing to speak and refusing to undress.

Expecting to win on the road is a sign of a good team. And yet great teams do not allow 99-yard drives to lose a game as time expires. For the moment, the Cardinals are stuck somewhere in between.

"This will only make us stronger," safety Antrel Rolle said.

For fans in Tennessee, this 20-17 victory was an instant classic, ranking a notch or two below the Music City Miracle. Quarterback Vince Young suddenly is threatening to steal the Comeback Player of the Year award from Brett Favre. Young led a Titans offense that shredded the Cardinals defense for 532 yards. He trumped Matt Leinart once again, just like he did for the BCS title in 2006.

"It was funny, because it was second or third down on the goal line, and Steve (Breaston) came up to me," Leinart said. "He was like, 'God, this is deja vu all over again.' He did that to Michigan, and he did that to myself in the title game."

Afterward, Young dedicated "all the love" to the late Steve McNair, and the Titans gave a game ball to assistant coach Dave McGinnis, the affable man once fired by the Cardinals. In another time, the latter gesture might've brought a smile to many Big Red fans.

Not now. This game was too painful, and attempts to minimize the sting were feeble and clumsy. Coach Ken Whisenhunt said his defense controlled Titans running back Chris Johnson fairly well, if not for that 85-yard touchdown burst. For a moment, he sounded just like Clancy Pendergast, the former defensive coordinator who specialized in such rationalizations, the same guy that Whisenhunt fired after the end of last season.

"That's on us," linebacker Clark Haggans said of the Titans' three fourth-down conversions on the final drive. "We're supposed to stop that. You can't convert all of them. That's unacceptable. We need to do our job."

If you need bright spots, punter Ben Graham and special-teams ace LaRod Stephens-Howling had great games. Leinart played well in the second half, restoring much of his confidence and ours. And Dominique-Rodgers Cromartie played with great fire, forcing a key fumble and jawing with Johnson after his long touchdown run.

"He told me he was still faster than me," said Johnson, who disputed the claim.

Yet the trouble with silver linings and moral victories are that they don't exist in the NFL. You win or you lose, and you move on. And for all the relief that accompanied Leinart's competent performance, he has produced just one touchdown in his past six quarters of football, and his surprise start Sunday prompted extremely cautious play-calling in the first half.

The truth is painfully clear. This team goes nowhere special without a healthy Kurt Warner, and he's still experiencing some unnerving symptoms from a hit he suffered last week against the Rams.

"It feels like a light sensitivity (in his eyes) or my eyes aren't quite adjusted right," Warner said.

"I had tightness in my neck all week, so I think we were trying to gauge whether what I was feeling was coming from issues in my neck or whether it was an issue with my head. Ultimately, we couldn't make that determination, and that's what led us to the decision that we came to."

Caution is prudent in this case, and yet one game has been chipped off the division lead. The powerful Vikings are coming to town. Warner isn't sure what's next and, as a result, neither do Cardinals fans.

At the moment, both have a hard time seeing straight.

By Paul Kuharsky, ESPN.com

JOHNSON'S NOVEMBER A RECORD MONTH
Chris Johnson continued his historic march with another big game Sunday in the Titans’ win over Arizona.

Here’s a breakdown from the NFL of what he’s doing:

• Johnson gained 154 rushing yards (8.6 average) on 18 carries in the Titans’ 20-17 win over Arizona. Johnson has posted at least 125 rushing yards in six consecutive games, tying the NFL record set by Pro Football Hall of Famers Earl Campbell (1980) and Eric Dickerson (1984).
• Johnson is the first player in NFL history with six consecutive games of 125+ rushing yards and a 5.0+ yards per carry average in each of those games. Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown (1958) accomplished this feat in five consecutive games.
• Johnson rushed for 800 yards in November, the most by a player in a calendar month since 1970.

By Paul Kuharsky, ESPN.com

WRAP-UP: TITANS 20, CARDINALS 17
Quarterback Vince Young was spectacular in leading the Titans to their fifth straight win Sunday, a 20-17 victory over the Cardinals that ended with Young leading the winning 99-yard touchdown drive.

Young played a very efficient game. He is throwing the ball much better than at any point of his career and with excellent touch. He consistently moved his team. Maybe most impressive, Young’s deep ball was dead on against a formidable Cardinals secondary. On the last drive of the game, Young did what he always seems to do in these situations -- he came through in the clutch.

This could be yet another turning point in Young’s career. There are a few reasons for Young’s revival and all were very prevalent in this game. First off, the coaching staff and his supporting cast have all done a terrific job around him and in best utilizing his strengths and weaknesses without ever putting too much on his plate at one time.

Second, he is confident. Success breeds success and Young appears to be far more secure now with his position on this team and what he is capable of doing on the field. He has matured both on and off the field.

Third, he just isn’t making the big mistake. Young trusts his teammates and realizes that there is little good that can come out of him forcing an issue. He is very content to throw the ball away and live to fight another down or series.

Lastly, he is throwing the ball much better than he ever has as a professional. He is accurate. His touch is superb, but he also has the firepower to get the ball into tight areas. We had not seen this out of him before this point.

By Peter King, SI.com

TENNESSEE'S THRILLING LAST-SECOND TOUCHDOWN TRUMPED ALL IN WEEK 12
There's much to dissect this morning. Concussions, Canton, Jim Caldwell, Colts, Bill Cowher, and later in the alphabet, Vince Young's drive, Dennis Dixon's mistake, Rex Ryan's challenge, San Diego's streak, the MVP storm and the latest Game of the Year tonight in New Orleans.

And the Miraculous Bra, of course. (Won't the Victoria's Secret people be excited to make the second graph of Monday Morning Quarterback!)

My starting point is the parking lot outside LP Field in Nashville. That's where Kenny Britt was clutching a Roger Goodell-autographed football an hour after making the kind of catch dreams are made of. I'm a sap, which you may have figured after reading this column for a while. I like sappy stories. That's why concussions and perfect seasons and MVP arguments can wait. Britt and Young deserve a moment here, right at the top of Week 12.

Ninety-nine yards to a saved season for Tennessee.

"I've got the ball in my hands,'' said Britt, speaking of the ball he caught to beat Arizona Sunday at the final gun in Nashville, speaking from the parking lot outside the stadium. "I don't want to let it go.''

Oddest thing about the catch you've all seen 10 times by now: "I never knew I got hit for a half-hour or so after it happened,'' Britt told me. Britt caught the ball near the back of the end zone, then got crushed by nickel safety Matt Ware. He did an impressive job of hanging onto the ball while getting hit with a Rodney Harrison-like ton of bricks from Ware.

"In a situation like that, everything's a blur," Britt said. "I found out [I'd been hit] when I took off my shoulder pads and got in the shower. I've got this big bruise on my left shoulder, and I'm like, 'How'd that get there?' '' Then he reconstructed the play, and people told him he got waylaid in the end zone, and Britt had no idea. Interesting.

There's something about the Titans that speaks to exactly why the NFL is so popular. There's always time for a miracle. When this month dawned, Tennessee was basically playing out the string. At 0-6 when they took the field Nov. 1 against Jacksonville, the Titans were coming off a 59-0 embarrassment in New England. I stated the obvious on one of the Notre Dame halftime shows on NBC -- that coach Jeff Fisher and Young would not be together in Tennessee for the 2010 season. One, maybe. But not both. Thirty days later, we're asking this crazy question: If the Titans can shock the world in Indianapolis Sunday, they're 6-6, and they'd have three of the last four at home to make a legit playoff run.

Young had engineered four straight wins since taking over for Kerry Collins, but Sunday's game looked bleak late in the fourth quarter. Arizona led 17-13 with five minutes left when Britt's deadly fumble after a 51-yard gain seemed to end it for Tennessee. Even when Arizona stalled, Ben Graham's punt was downed at the Tennessee 1 by rookie LaRod Stephens-Howling (Name of the Year, by the way), who'd played a superb game for the Cards, having returned a kick 99 yards for a touchdown in the third quarter. Tennessee took over at the one with 2:37 left. A dink here, a dunk there, two fourth-down conversions, smart use of the clock and smart play-calling that focused on small chunks ... until it was fourth-and-goal from the 10 with six seconds left.

Last play of the game. Maybe the last meaningful play of Tennessee's season.

Offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger called a play designed to have four receivers spaced fairly evenly across the end zone. Tight end Bo Scaife and wideout Lavelle Hawkins would run twin curls about three yards deep in the end zone. Nate Washington and Britt would line up in the right and left slots, respectively, and run posts. Different kinds of posts though -- posts that were really 20-yard incuts, where each would run straight to the end line, then turn toward the middle and troll the end line.

"We haven't run that play since I've been back,'' said Heimerdinger, who begin his second stint with Tennessee last season. "Haven't practiced it either. Sometimes that happens -- you see something you think can work against a defense, and you hope your guys can all run it. On that play, Kenny's just playing football.''

Britt's a Jersey kid, raised in Bayonne and polished at Rutgers. He remembered lessons from both places in the last six seconds of this game -- the kind of memories that will have his mentors bursting with pride.

Britt, at 6-3 and 218 pounds, always had the size to be a good prospect at receiver. But he was known at Rutgers as a guy with iffy hands. "Every day, my coach, Greg Schiano, and my offensive coordinator, John McNulty, would be on me about my focus. I'd drop one, and they'd be like, 'Focus! Focus!' That's what I kept thinking about when I knew the ball might come to me.

"I saw Vince scramble. Sometimes in practice he throws it sidearm, so you know you have to be ready for anything. I'm running across the back of the end zone hoping he sees me, and he lets it go for me. First I thought there'd be a clear path for the ball, but then it looked like there was traffic. I've always been taught to catch with your eyes and catch with your hands. Concentrate. Focus. And I had to go up for it. My high school coach, Ricky Rodriguez, always used to say, 'Catch before two.' Catch the ball before your two feet hit the ground. The ball came and I knew I was going to get it.''

He got it. And he might never let it go, from the sounds of how happy he was in the parking lot.

By Dan Graziano, Fanhouse.com

ANYTHING POSSIBLE FOR VINCE YOUNG'S TITANS -- EVEN MIRACLES
Can this really happen? Can the Tennessee Titans, who were beaten, buried and embarrassed in the snow in New England just six weeks ago, honestly make a run at the playoffs? Can Vince Young, who was stapled to the bench and labeled a bust while this team's season appeared sunk, be the rock-steady fourth-quarter magician who leads them there? Young believes it. All-Galaxy running back Chris Johnson, who predicted five games ago that the team would win its final 10 and still has a chance to be right, certainly believes it. And if you were here Sunday and you watched Johnson, Young and Kenny Britt lead the Titans to a breathless, last-second 20-17 victory over the Arizona Cardinals, you'd believe it too. You'd believe the Tennessee Titans can do anything.

"Everything is possible," Young said, moments after his 10-yard final-second touchdown pass to Britt finished off a 99-yard touchdown drive and the NFL's latest Game of the Year. "You've got to believe that, and our confidence level is definitely very high on that."

Can this happen? It sure didn't look that way after a pinpoint punt by Arizona's Ben Graham set Young and the Titans up at their own 1-yard line with 2:37 left in the game and the Cardinals up by four. But Young stayed cool. The players who were in the huddle with him throughout the final drive said it felt like the middle of the game, not a desperate two-minute drill. This felt like business, which is the way the Titans like it.

"I don't think this is a team that needs to be pumped up anymore," receiver Nate Washington said.

They did, however, need those 99 yards, and the way they got them says a lot about where Young is in his development. Johnson, who earlier in the game ripped off an 85-yard touchdown run and tied an NFL record held by Eric Dickerson and Earl Campbell with his sixth straight game of at least 125 rushing yards, did not touch the ball once on the final drive. And Young, whose legs have been an essential part of his game since college (and the dramatic 2006 BCS championship game in which he and the Texans Longhorns beat Matt Leinart -- who, yes, did start for the Cardinals on Sunday -- and the USC Trojans), would run the ball just once. Of the 18 plays on the final drive, 16 were passes by Young. One was a run by him and the other was a sack.

"It was hard," Young said of not running the ball. "It takes a lot of patience, a lot of confidence. Their defensive line was spying two guys on me on the inside, and so we couldn't do that anyway."

So he sat in the pocket and started throwing. Six yards to Britt, who was looking like the goat after fumbling away the ball on Tennessee's previous drive. Two incompletions, and then a clutch 10-yarder to Britt on 4th-and-4 to keep the game alive with 1:36 to go. From his own 17, then, came the lucky play that every big drive seems to need. A pass over the middle that was deflected by Calais Campbell looked certain to be intercepted and then, somehow, was caught by tight end Bo Scaife for a 19-yard gain and another first down.

"That ball looked like it was headed for the opponent's hands," Young said. "And all of a sudden Bo came out of nowhere. Tremendous, the focus level Bo had to make that catch. Much love to him for that."

Much love, but much more work -- 64 yards -- to go. Young got back behind center and found Lavelle Hawkins, who hadn't caught a pass all year prior to this game, for two yards. Then, as if he weren't looking deep enough down the depth chart for his targets, he hit tight end Jared Cook for 12 on the next play, moving the ball to midfield. After the game, Young said he has confidence in his seldom-used receivers because he knows they're hungry for the ball.

"When you have an offensive coordinator like (Mike) Heimerdinger, who's crazy, and who drinks a lot of Diet Cokes every day, you don't have any choice but to want to make plays," Young said. "When that guy's in your face and challenging you the way he does all of us every day in practice, you want the ball."

The crowd at LP Field began to feel it. If they weren't believers already, they were begging Young to push them over the edge. He threw incomplete to Washington on first down, ran six yards on second and missed Scaife on third, setting up the drive's second fourth down, with 43 seconds left, from the Cardinals' 44-yard line. And then he found Hawkins, again, for 13 yards and another first down.

"We're on a journey now, and it's going to be tough," Washington said later. "But we're all on it. Together. That's every guy on the roster. We don't know what's going to happen, but we do know we're going to keep fighting until the clock hits zeroes. We're not going to quit."