Our thanks go out to Bam Morris of Blitzburgh Blog for answering our questions about the Steelers in our weekly question and answer exchange.  Following are Bam's answers to my questions.

Total Titans:  What do the returns of Rashard Mendenhall and James Harrison mean to the offense and defense, respectively? How does this change the way the Steelers play on each side of the ball?

Do you have a question or two about the Pittsburgh Steelers?  Or perhaps about the way they match up with the Tennessee Titans?  To get answers from the other side's viewpoint, we've invited Bam Morris from Blitzburgh Blog to join us in another weekly question and answer exchange.

Please leave your questions in the comments section.  Because it's a short week, I'll send off our questions Tuesday and will post Bam's answers on Wednesday.

The NFL has started officially keeping track of player participation and releasing snap totals to the media. Here's how the Titans lined up at Minnesota in Week 5.

OFFENSE (71 total)
QB: Matt Hasselbeck 63, Rusty Smith 7
RB/FB: Chris Johnson 48, Javon Ringer 15, Quinn Johnson 11, Darius Reynaud 7
TE: Jared Cook 43, Craig Stevens 25, Taylor Thompson 15
WR: Nate Washington 67, Damian Williams 47, Kendall Wright 47, Kenny Britt 28
OL: Leroy Harris 71, David Stewart 71, Fernando Velasco 71, Steve Hutchinson 70, Michael Roos 70
Other: Jordan Babineaux 1, Beau Brinkley 1, Tommie Campbell 1, Brett Kern 1, Tim Shaw 1

I would wager a moderately large sum of money the players I listed as "Other" were on the field in the pseudo-fake punt the Titans ran, and that play was also the only one Hutchinson and Roos missed.

DEFENSE (69 total)
DE: Kamerion Wimbley 61, Derrick Morgan 56, Pannel Egboh 17
DT: Jurrell Casey 49, Sen'Derrick Marks 37, Mike Martin 31, Karl Klug 16, DaJohn Harris 3
LB: Akeem Ayers 63, Colin McCarthy 60, Zach Brown 38, Zac Diles 9
CB: Jason McCourty 66, Alterraun Verner 64, Ryan Mouton 31, Tommie Campbell 4, Coty Sensabaugh 3
S: Jordan Babineaux 66, Michael Griffin 59, Robert Johnson 22, Al Afalava 4

Rob Bironas, Kevin Matthews, and Will Witherspoon each only played on sepcial teams (Witherspoon's official half tackle on Peterson's run at 1Q 3:50 appears to be a misidentification of Jurrell Casey). Byron Stingily did not appear in the game.

This is getting really old, but the Titans were blown out for the fourth time in five games this season, losing to the Vikings in Minnesota by a final score of 30-7. The Vikings became the fifth team to score 30 points or more against the Titans this season. They started off by being the fourth team to score a touchdown on their first or second possession and went into halftime with a 13-0 lead. The Vikings extended that to 23-0 in the third quarter, and then it was all over but the shouting. The Titans finally got on the board with a Jared Cook touchdown, but then allowed their eighth touchdown to a tight end for the final margin.

The offense was probably your larger culprit today, as the Titans did nothing. I've spent a lot of time writing relatively nice things about Matt Hasselbeck's play as a Titans, but there's little nice to say about today's game. He spent a lot of the early going trying to throw the ball to defenders, and Antoine Winfield finally obliged to set up the score that made it 10-0. Chris Johnson found little running room and didn't do anything special with the yards he found. Part of the reason Hasselbeck threw so many near-picks was the receivers didn't get open. The whole team put up less than 100 yards of offense through three quarters; I'm not a big total yardage guy, but that accurately reflected how completely dead the offense was.

Defensively, the Titans did pick off Christian Ponder twice, on very interceptable balls, including one when the Vikings were driving to extend their lead late in the first half. Zach Brown played WLB and ended up with a few tackles. Adrian Peterson had some big runs on lead draw, a play I noted in my game preview. Percy Harvin had over 100 yards and two touchdowns, one on the ground and one in the air. Tight end Kyle Rudolph only had 23 yards but did have that score. Mike Martin had the Titans' only sack of the game when he brought down Ponder on a scramble for no gain.

Oh, and Javon Ringer late in the fourth quarter suffered a nasty leg injury-not quite as bad as Marc Mariani's, I don't think, but it was close. I wouldn't be surprised if he's out for the year. I didn't notice any other injuries, but, yeah, this game was one to forget for the Titans.

The inactives are out for today's game at Mall of America Field between the Titans and the Vikings, and here they are:

MINNESOTA VIKINGS: OL Mark Asper, QB McLeod Bethel-Thompson, LB Marvin Mitchell, S Mistral Raymond, DE D'Aundre Reed, S Andrew Sendejo, WR Jairus Wright

TENNESSEE TITANS: LB Patrick Bailey, RB Jamie Harper, WR Lavelle Hawkins, QB Jake Locker, OG Deuce Lutui, OT Mike Otto, DE Scott Solomon

For the Vikings, wideout Michael Jenkins and linebacker Erin Henderson are active after being listed as questionable. Kenny Britt and Colin McCarthy are both active for the Titans; given Britt's status depended on warmups, I'm a bit surprised to see Hawkins down, but with Jared Cook likely to play a bigger role, the Titans have some depth if need be.

Feel free to leave your thoughts here during today's game. I'll be chiming in mostly on Twitter, and will have the normal recap up after the game.

The first quarter of the season is over and it's now a good time to review the Titans'  basic stats.  As you would expect, after three blowout losses and an overtime win in a shootout, the stats are not pretty.

Before getting into the stats, I'd like to say that when Mike Munchak hired Chris Palmer and Jerry Gray as his coordinators, I was more confident in Gray's ability than Palmer's.  Now that a season and a quarter have been played, I'm now more confident in Palmer than in Gray.  The stats don't do anything to refute the reasons for that thinking, insofar as the offense has been outperforming the defense, especially this year.

And now, the highlights lowlights for the first quarter of the 2012 season, after the jump.