I ran some of these numbers after Chris Palmer was fired, but with the season concluded, it's time to take a final look at how field position affected the Titans' offensive performance in 2012.

I may have said this before on this site, once or twice, in some detail, but the Titans weren't very good on offense in 2012. As the numbers will show, they struggled to move the ball when they had bad field position. They struggled to move the ball when they had pretty good field position. They did ok when they had great field position, but they didn't have great field position very often. Instead, they had bad field position more often. The Titans recently fired Alan Lowry, but it doesn't look like special teams was really the problem for the Titans in 2012.

After the jump, numbers and charts and more analysis.

The flip side to my recent pick of Derrick Morgan the biggest surprise for the Titans in 2012 is picking the biggest disappointment. While Morgan wasn't the only player I considered for that honor, after a 6-10 season following up 2011's 7-9 mark, the disappointment field is sadly a competitive one.

The problem with picking a disappointment (and also a surprise) is that it is relative to expectations; one man's disappointment may be another's reasonable performance. Take, for instance, Karl Klug. He had a very productive rookie year with 7.0 sacks, and many Titans fans were looking for that many or more again in 2012. He slipped to only 3.5 this year, and many people might rate him a disappointment. As I wrote before the season, though, he was lucky with how many sacks he got relative to how much total pressure he had, and 3-4 sacks would be a more reasonable expectation for his 2012 production. That's right in line with the 3.5 sacks he ended up with as a fourth defensive tackle who tended to play situationally. That doesn't make him a disappointment in my book.

My pick for the biggest disappointment for the Titans in 2012 is quarterback Jake Locker. I wrote before the season that "whether Hasselbeck or Locker is the starting quarterback will not dramatically change how good the Titans will be in 2012." As far as my predictions go, this isn't the worst one I've made, but it certainly wasn't the best one either. Through much of the season, it was relatively close to true, but the Titans ended up a better offense with Matt Hasselbeck under center than they were with Jake Locker thanks to a string of six consecutive below-average offensive performances to end the season .

Among all the firings of coaches and general managers around the league last week, there were three I thought were noteworthy regarding their success against the Titans.  Those three are former Chargers general manager A.J. Smith and coach Norv Turner and former Bears coach Lovie Smith.

As we painfully recall, the Chargers and Bears each humiliated the Titans in 2012, by scores of 38-10 and 51-20, but the three men who are the focus of this article have enjoyed success against the Titans far beyond this past season.  We'll look at their careers versus the Titans, after the jump.

I've already chosen him as the defensive MVP, but after considering all the candidates for the most surprising (in a good way) player for the Tennessee Titans in 2012, my choice is the man I've already given one award to, defensive end Derrick Morgan.

The first two years of the 2010 first-round pick's career were blah. The first was, of course, shortened by his knee injury. The second, well, he didn't fare poorly against the run, but he also didn't show much of a pass rush or look explosive. About as much as a defensive player can do for a bad defense on a bad team, though, he broke out in 2012. I've already noted the six sacks of his own, more than any other player on the team. I've noted how he created even more sacks for other players. I've noted he played more snaps than any other player in the defensive front seven. I've already noted his area of responsibility is where the Titans were stoutest against the run.

What I haven't yet noted is how impressive his numbers were by Football Outsiders individual defensive metrics. He was involved in more plays than any other defensive lineman. He was involved in a higher rate of successful plays (for the defense) than any other player on the team. He finished third on the team in Stops, the number of plays that result in an unsuccessful play for the offense, behind only Akeem Ayers and Zach Brown, and more than any single player on defense had in 2011. He finished first on the team in Defeats, plays that prevent a first-down conversion on third or fourth down, result in a loss, or create a turnover. His Defeat total was more than any player on the defense had in 2011. By NFL numbers, he had six passes defensed, which is more than Michael Griffin, Zach Brown, Ryan Mouton, or Coty Sensabaugh, guys who spent a lot of time in coverage, did.

In short, I was wondering after his first two seasons if Derrick Morgan was more than a run-stopping end. In 2012, he answered my question with an emphatic "yes," and that makes him my 2012 Tennessee Titans biggest surprise.

As I did for 2012, I'll be doing my best to keep track of the Tennessee Titans' current salary cap situation. You can find that page here, and I'll be updating that chart when things happen, like the Titans re-sign their own players or sign free agents.

Currently, the Titans have 50 players under contract for 2013, representing, as best as I can tell, a cap commitment of about $101 million. That's roughly $20 million below the estimated 2013 salary cap amount of $121 million, and is exclusive of any rollover of unused 2012 cap room. My best estimate is the Titans finished 2012 with about $12.9 million in unused cap room. Depending on bonuses and some other things, the Titans should have perhaps $33 million of cap room with which to re-sign their own players and do other things. They could also clear up additional cap room by releasing players.

As always, all salary information I give you should be considered estimates only, and I'll be updating and correcting my 2013 cap page plenty over the coming year.

Programming Note: Last year, I picked a special teams MVP. I'm not going to do that this year. If I did, it would probably be Darius Reynaud given the Titans ranked first in the league in Football Outsiders Punt Return value. More on that and related matters in a future post.

.Last year, this was a very difficult choice, as there were four members of the rookie class who had highly productive seasons and could stake some sort of claim to the honor of rookie of the year. I ultimately chose Jurrell Casey, but Akeem Ayers, Karl Klug, and Colin McCarthy all had some sort of argument in their favor. This year, only two rookies became starter-level contributors, which meant they were the only two rookies I considered for this award. (Sorry, Beau Brinkley, I don't consider long-snapping a starter-level contributor.) Of the two choices, I had to pick a winner, and decided to go with outside linebacker Zach Brown over wide receiver Kendall Wright.

Brown, a second-round pick out of North Carolina, picked up his first NFL start in Week 2 at San Diego and would end up starting 14 of 16 games. The early start notwithstanding, it took him until midseason to solidify his status as a major contributor. As late as the Week 7 contest against the Bills, he played only 7 snaps on defense as the Titans spent the majority of the game in the nickel package and they did not yet trust Brown to play weakside backer in that role. That changed the next week against the Colts, and the change was confirmed a week later against the Bears, when he played more snaps than any other linebacker. I broke down his play against the Bears in some detail and was pleasantly surprised by the improvement even from earlier in the season. While he still made plenty of mistakes due to inexperience, that kind of elevation from afterthought to major contributor and the improvement I noticed in his game was enough for me to make Brown my rookie of the year.

After making an offensive MVP selection, eventually settling on Michael Roos, I turned my attention to the other side of the ball and found myself with difficulties just as great as those I'd just faced. As was the case on offense, neither the run defense nor the pass defense was anything like consistently good. Moreover, the Titans allowed more points than any team in the history of the franchise. Ultimately, though, I decided that having committed myself to this endeavor, I had to go make a choice.

Unfortunately, there were no great choices. On offense, I eventually went and defaulted to the best player on the team who I feel fairly comfortable saying is an above-average NFL starter for his role on the team. On the defensive side of the ball, I'm not sure there's any such player. I don't mean for that to sound like too much of an insult-there are players on the defense who played pretty well at times, but there are a lot of really good players around the NFL. Part of that, of course, is what I wrote before the draft, about the Titans lacking premium defensive players, and the players they're playing like premium defensive players didn't spend 2012 playing like they were premium defensive players.

My 2012 Tennessee Titans defensive MVP is defensive end Derrick Morgan. The 2010 first-round selection seemed to be a good example of a player who really blossomed in his second year back after the ACL ended that ended his rookie season after only four games. He started all 16 games and ended the year with more playing time any other player in the front seven. He responded to the playing time by putting up numbers, including a career-high 6.5 sacks and, as I noted, creating even more sacks for other players. At the same time, he wasn't just a pass rusher, playing stout run defense. The Titans were on the whole a pretty bad run defense, but an area of relative strength was against runs right end, where they ranked 13th by Football Outsiders Adjusted Line Yards metric. In a defensively down season, he stood out the most in a positive way to me.

After the jump, a breakdown of the other candidates I considered.