We continue our look at the Titans position by position as we rapidly approach the 2012 regular season with an analysis of the special teams, where the Titans have two returning stalwarts and two players who will be filling new jobs.

My preferred metric for evaluating special teams play, and not just because I write for them, is Football Outsiders' ratings. That's for the same basic reason I wrote yesterday's post on the pass rush: context matters. Take, for instance, field goals. NFL kickers as a whole hit roughly 90% of their kicks from inside of 40 or so yards. Kicks attempted in indoor stadiums and in warm weather are made more frequently than kicks in cold weather. Players like Mike Vanderjagt and Nate Kaeding put up many seasons with good accuracy rates where they weren't actually that great thanks to not attempting long kicks and playing their home games in generally very favorable conditions.

I'm pleased to report, then, that Rob Bironas going 29 for 32 on field goal attempts last year, plus his 34-34 on extra points, was the second-most valuable kicking performance in the NFL last year. He was a very good 9-10 on attempts from 40-49 yards and an even better 6 of 7 from 50 yards and beyond, with his only miss there coming on what would have been a record-setting 67 yard try. As I wrote last preseason, almost all kickers have bouts of inconsistency, and it wouldn't surprise me to see Bironas finally have a bit of a down season.

As superlative as Bironas has been on field goal attempts, his record on kickoffs has been much more mixed the last couple seasons. In contrast to his strong and accurate leg on field goals, his kickoff distance was a little below-average last season after a couple seasons where he ranked narrowly above average. For whatever reason, Bironas doesn't seem to be getting the same kickoff distance he was earlier in his career. Bironas is entering the final year of his current contract this year; I'd expect the Titans to franchise him barring a massive dropoff in his leg strength this year.

Right now, there's some optimism around the Titans that the pass rush might be better. It needs to be better. As I noted this offseason, they were the league's second-worst team at getting to the opposing passer.  Coming off two preseason games with four sacks each, even some who tend toward the skeptical side are starting to change their mind. I'm not one of them, though.

Anything that happens in a limited sample size, especially one as small as preseason, is tend to great overreading. Sixteen games' worth of data is hard enough to make conclusions from; three games, with different players playing in different mixes and with different teammates, is much more prone to generalizations that end up being fraught with error.

Superficially, though, it does seem like the Titans got a lot of pressure against the Cardinals. The Cardinals ran many more plays than the Titans, though, and those four sacks came on 59 non-scramble dropbacks. That's not bad, 6.4% unadjusted rate, but it's also less impressive. Against the Cardinals' numbers the rest of the preseason, though, that's even less impressive. On the whole, the three quarterbacks who played against the Titans have been sacked nine times on 137 non-scramble dropbacks. That's a 6.6% rate, or better than the Titans' pass rate rush.  In other words, the Titans did a worse job of sacking the Cardinals than did the Cardinals' prior preseason opponents. Those prior preseason opponents were the Saints, Raiders, and Chiefs, three teams that also ranked among the dozen worst teams in the league at rushing the passer last year.

Facing a reduction in the roster limit from 90 to 75 by tomorrow afternoon, the Tennessee Titans announced today they released the following players:

P/K Will Batson, OL George Bias, WR Chase Deadder, RB Herb Donaldson, WR LaQuinton Evans, WR Marcus Harris, TE Joey Haynos, OL Jonathan Palmer, S Christian Scott, QB Nick Stephens, and OL William Vlachos.

In addition to releasing those players, the Titans put Marc Mariani on injured reserve, ensuring (as we already knew) he would miss the entire 2012 season thanks to the broken leg he suffered against the Cardinals. Rookie safety Markelle Martin was moved from Active/PUP to Reserve/PUP; if the Titans want to activate him, they'll need to clear a space on the active roster. Kenny Britt remains on Active/PUP. 

There were no surprises to me among any of today's roster moves. Things are about to get really interesting, though, as the Titans will have to clear an additional 22 places on the active roster by next Friday evening, the day after the preseason finale against the Saints, and a day earlier than cutdown day in the past. 

I'll get to the Cardinals game in more details later, but for now we continue our trip around the Titans position by position as we heard toward the 2012 regular season with a look at the outside linebackers.

As I noted in the offseason positional analysis, this was a position of strength for the Titans, back when mainstays Keith Bulluck and David Thornton roamed the position. David Thornton and Keith Bulluck got old and hurt, though, and it became a bit of a wasteland. Will Witherspoon did the best he could, but it wasn't enough as NFL tight ends continued to give the Titans some fits.

The arrival of defensive coordinator Jerry Gray brought a new philosophy to the position. No longer would the Titans have two run-and-chase linebackers who played best in space, traditional Will linebackers. The Titans would still have one Will linebacker, of course, but they would have as well a traditional Sam linebacker, a bigger player who stood on the line of scrimmage and ate up blocks. The Will linebacker would be more traditional, but might do things Titans will linebackers didn't used to do, like rush the passer more than, say, twice a month.

It was a lot more interesting late than it was early, but the Titans tonight improved to 2-1 in the preseason with a 32-27 win over the Arizona Cardinals thanks to a fourth-quarter touchdown run by Jamie Harper. The bigger storylines out of the game, though, were Jake Locker's first start as a starter and a gruesome injury that will cost Marc Mariani the 2012 season.

Jake Locker looked a lot better than he did against the Buccaneers, completing 11 of 20 passes for 134 yards and two touchdowns. If you're starting to think of what a more typical "Jake Locker game" might look like, today's had it. He opened the scoring with his best pass of the preseason to date, a back-shoulder throw to Kendall Wright that the rookie took into the end zone for a 10-yard score. His second touchdown was a 28-yarder to Nate Washington on crossing route; Washington's defender got picked by Jared Cook, and it was smooth sailing to the end zone. A big gain to Jared Cook on Locker's first real downfield completion of the preseason also set up a field goal.

Beyond those nice throws, Locker showed some of the same inaccuracies that dogged him last week and also in the past, overthrowing several outside passes and throwing behind Washington on an out. He also had a couple passes tipped at the line, a problem that plauged Matt Hasselbeck last year. On the whole, it was a much more encouraging performance, but not without a few flaws.

The Tennessee Titans announced today cornerback Jason McCourty signed a contract extension that will keep him a Titan through 2017. McCourty had been slated to make $1.26 million in this, the final year of the deal he signed when the Titans selected him out of Rutgers in the sixth round of the 2009 NFL draft. Adam Schefter indicates the extension is for $43 million over 5 years, with $20 million guaranteed. An additional $3 million is available in escalators.

In a year, McCourty has gone from a player struggling to reclaim a starting job he lost when he got injured to the mainstay of the Titans' cornerback unit and owner of a lucrative extension. Keep in mind that McCourty's contract terms are in addition to this season. It's thus more like $44.3 million over 6 years. That's still a little bit more than the $6.5 million or so APY I was expecting, but not too much above it, plus we don't know how much of the money is "real."

Slight monetary quibbles aside, it's a good sign the Titans used some of that cap room to lock McCourty up, as he was certainly their most important player scheduled to be a free agent next year. Next up on the extension list may be Jared Cook, as Jim Wyatt reported his agent and the Titans were talking. Given the money in Craig Stevens and the drafting of Taylor Thompson, though, it wouldn't surprise me to see no deal happen there.

FYI, I'll be using my game preview post for my comments on tonight's game.

The Titans finally play at home at LP Field this preseason, in front of some enormous new video boards. They take on the Arizona Cardinals this evening at 7 PM CT in a game that will be shown nationwide on ESPN.

Here's what I'll be keeping my eye on tonight:

• Jake Locker. His second career start, his first home start, and his first start since the Titans declared he was the winner of the quarterback competition. His performance last week was, well, not so good. He's not going to get benched, but I want to see something from him this preseason that makes me really optimistic about this year.
• The running back battle. In yesterday's roster prediction, I found a place for all four running backs, plus a fullback on the roster. I'm not convinced that's set in stone, especially which fullback the Titans might keep. Can Collin Mooney continue to look good and earn a spot? Is Jamie Harper's roster spot in trouble?
• Pass rush. The Cardinals don't have a particularly good starting offensive line. If the Titans were able to pressure the Bucs in a team effort, they should be able to pressure the Cardinals as well. If they can't, I'll be at least a bit concerned.
• Defensive back battles. The Titans are unlikely to keep six corners and four safeties. That means no more than two jobs for Chris Hawkins, Ryan Mouton, Al Afalava, and a player like Aaron Francisco. I gave the edge to Mouton and Afalava yesterday, but the situation is still at least potentially fluid. Who gets the snaps tonight, and how do they play?

I plan to chime in on the comments section of this post as the game is going on, and will probably also be yakking away on Twitter as well.