I did one of these at the start of training camp and now it's time for me to take another look at what the Titans' 53-man roster might look like.

After today's unsurprising release of DT Shaun Smith, the Titans' roster now stands at 88 players, though not the same 88 players when I did that earlier roster prediction. From that earlier call, C Eugene Amano and LB Gerald McRath are now on injured reserve. Thankfully, nobody I picked to make the team has yet been released. While the Titans' unofficial depth chart is pretty much the same as it was at the start of training camp, keeping track of plalyer participation has given me a different view, which I'll be incorporating into my roster prediction.

With that in mind, here's my latest guess.

I've covered Jake Locker and the rest of the offense, which means it's time for me to turn my attention to how the Titans' defense performed in the second preseason game against the Buccaneers.

As was the case with the offense, the numbers on the statsheet are impressive: six first downs and only 81 net yards of offense, with 33 of those coming on the Bucs' final possession in garbage time. Just seven points, and those on a drive that started at the Titans' 2 following an interception. The rest of the time, the Bucs had to drive the length of the field and manifestly failed to do so. More advanced metrics bear this out, as the Bucs' success rate was only 27%, roughly half what it was both halves against the Seahawks last week.

As with last week's analysis, I'll start with player participation, as best as I could tell.

After yesterday's post on Jake Locker's play, it's time to take a look at how the rest of the offense performed against the Buccaneers.

Since the Titans put up 30 points, all of them with the offense, there was only one turnover, and every quarterback who took a meaningful snap at least got the ball to the red zone, you'll find some fairly nice things in this breakdown. The star was the running game, and the Titans ran the ball more often than they called pass plays, so you'll find more on the running game, particularly the backs, than the passing game in this week.

As with last week's analysis, I'll start with player participation, as best I could tell.

I'm not going to do a full recap of the Titans' game against the Buccaneers, since I don't really care about the normal recap-type things. Instead, I'll launch straight into what should be the first of three posts of analysis.

The biggest thing to come out of Friday's preseason game was Jake Locker's first start, so I thought it was worth writing about every passing play the Titans had while he was in the game in some detail. The statline was pretty ugly: 11 attempts, 4 completions, 0 touchdowns, 1 interception, plus two scrambles for 24 yards. No sacks, as the Bucs only had one on the night.

After the jump, the PBP breakdown of Locker's throws, plus some conclusion-type things.

The Tennessee Titans play their second preseason game of 2012 tonight in Tampa against the Buccaneers. The game kicks off at 6:30 PM CT and will air on the Titans and Bucs local preseason affiliates.

Since it's the second preseason game, the Titans may have some idea of what the Bucs will try to do this game, but once again this game is much more about watching the Titans and what they do than what the Titans do against the Bucs. Gameplanning will be slight, so focus on what Titans players do.

Here are the things I'll be focusing my attention on this game:

• Jake Locker's first start. It's a QB competition, and Locker getting the starter after Hasselbeck started last week is exactly what you would expect. This will be his first game as an NFL starter and his first time playing early in the game, without a chance to get an idea what the defense is doing. Is he able to make plays? Is he on the same page with receivers? Does the team line up right and like last week avoid procedure penalties? Does he still throw fastballs on short passes?
• Chris Johnson. The Bucs were one of the opponents CJ had some notable successes against last year. Can he replicate that? Does he run aggressively and attack holes? Can either fullback actually make a good block?
• Wide receivers. I think there's still a job available for somebody for at least a couple weeks, and the pay difference between four weeks on the roster and four weeks on the practice squad is significant. Also, who gets Jake Locker's targets? He's been apparently throwing to Damian Williams a lot in camp, but Williams has struggled to put up good numbers ing ames. Is he on the same page with Nate Washington, the only healthy receiver on the team I really trust?
• Pass rush. The Titans had two sacks last week, one about 3.9 seconds and the other 5.1 seconds. Those are both pretty long sacks. Yes, Seattle did things to minimize the number of sacks they took, but I want to see Titans rushers beat blockers one-on-one quickly.
• Robert Johnson. The third-year safety has had a pretty quiet career thus far, but he was one of the first substitutes to enter the game last week. Will he be the guy in the Ruby package again? What's his role on the team?
• No injuries. The Titans stayed healthy last week. I want to see that continue.

I won't see the game until it reairs on NFL Network Sunday morning at 9 AM CT, but we'll have a recap up and I'll do some in-depth postgame analysis over the next couple days.

UPDATE (8/17/12 5:35 PM CT): The Titans announced CB Terrence Wheatley, TE Brandon Barden, LB Gerald McRath, OT Mike Otto, DE Dave Ball, and newly-signed OL Jonathan Palmer will not play tonight. Ball, Barden, and Wheatley all missed last week's game as well. Markelle Martin and Kenny Britt remain on the Physically Unable to Perform list and cannot play.

A while ago, comrade in the statistical revolution Chase Stuart at his site Football Perspective put together a list of how old each team was on offense and defense. Now, obviously you can't just take roster size and apply it, but need to try to assess how valuable, relatively, different players are. For that, Chase used P-F-R's AV metric. I have my quibbles with that, but it's good enough for purposes, and he got an interest Titans-related result: the Titans were the fourth-oldest team on offense and the fourth-youngest on defense. How might that change this year?

Obviously, without any turnover, you'd expect a team to just be a year older. No turnover is not a reasonable expectation, but the Titans didn't do much to get younger on offense. They cut an older player in Daniel Graham, but his role on the team was slight. Guard Jake Scott, who wasn't young, departed via free agency, but they replaced him with an even older player in Steve Hutchinson. Re-signing Craig Stevens and Lavelle Hawkins made them older. The big offensive additions (sort of) are Kendall Wright and Kenny Britt (whose value should be greater this year). Unfortunately, the players whose production they're more likely to take up were already young players-Nate Washington will still be pretty valuable, and Damian Williams and Kendall Wright were both pretty young.

The single biggest driver of AV-weighted offensive age for the Titans is unsurpisingly the quarterback position, and the uncertain starter status means I'm not sure how to allocate the AV points for 2012. Even if you allocate all of them to Jake Locker, though, the Titans still project to be a team that's older than average on offense. A lot of that age comes from the offensive line, and I keep going back to the Titans' inability to develop younger offensive linemen. They project to be a little bit younger than they were before the Eugene Amano injury, but while Fernando Velasco isn't very experienced, he's not young-already 27, pretty much league-average. If there's a position to be old at, offensive line is probably the least worst one, but seeing them develop a young offensive lineman would be a nice change.
 

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I covered the offense a couple days ago, and now it's time for the other side of the ball. I went through and re-watched in great but not obsessive detail all of the Titans' defensive plays against the Seahawks. I kept track of player participation (as best I could off the Seahawks broadcast aired on NFL Network), plus took my usual smattering of notes.

Details, details, details after the jump.