Will Young Air It Out More?

One of the big themes of the 2008 Titans season will be how much Tennessee opens up the playbook in Vince Young's third season.

In his first two seasons, Young has been asked to not make mistakes, make some key third-down conversions and use his legs to move the chains. He only threw 27 passes a game as a rookie, and threw even less, 25 per game, as a second-year pro.

But Young now has 29 starts under his belt, and should be able to take on more responsibility. With that in mind, Young is saying that he hopes to go deep more often in 2008. The big question now is whether Jeff Fisher agrees. According to the Tennessean, new offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger is much more prone to throw the ball downfield than Norm Chow, the coordinator he replaced this offseason. The numbers that run with the story don't necessarily show that, but the general feeling seems to be that the Titans will aim for more big plays in '08.

If the Titans running game is as good as it should be, than there should be some opportunities to take chances deep, as teams will be forced to walk a safety up in running situations. But Heimerdinger knows that they biggest question that stands between long touchdowns and incomplete passes has little to do with Young's accuracy on the deep ball.

"A wide receiver who can separate. If a wide receiver can't beat one-on-one and separate then we have a problem," Heimerdinger said. "I just think you have to throw it over and over again where you have confidence of where it's going to be and where it should be. If you don't throw it over and over again and work on it then it's less than a 50-50 chance.''

That's the biggest question. No receiver on the Titans roster averaged more than 14 yards per catch last season. But Williams and Jones have the speed to get deep every now and then, while Justin Gage's size should enable him to win some jump balls. It's not a great receiver corps, but the Titans should be able to get deep more often than they did last year.