Thoughts on the 2010 preseason schedule

Aside from the Tye Hill signing, there was one other item of actual legitimate news from the Titans this week, the release of the 2010 preseason schedule.  For those who haven’t seen it yet, or just for the record, here it is:

Week 1 (Aug. 12-15), @Seattle
Week 2 (Aug. 23), v. Arizona 
Week 3 (Aug. 26-29), @Carolina
Week 4 (Sept. 2-3), v. New Orleans

I confess my primary interests in the preseason schedule are selfish ones.  From my perch in the Chicago area, seeing the Titans play in person is a rare treat, so I hope for games in driving distance.  A trip to Green Bay two years ago was a lot of fun, and every NFL fan should see a game at Lambeau, especially if it doesn’t entail getting home at 2 A.M. and going to work the next morning.  Alas, Seattle and Carolina are a little too far for me.

The other thing I look for is national TV games.  As an out of market fan, I’m now very happy to have the NFL Network to re-air every preseason game, but for years you only got the rare treasured moments of watching the Titans in their gestation phase.  Last year, we were a little spoiled with two national TV games between the Hall of Fame game and the Dallas game, but that felt a little like overdoing it.  Still, I’m happy to see the home game against the Cardinals be chosen for an ESPN Monday Night Football telecast and plan to boot up the liveblog software for that little exercise.

If you want to see somebody pretend to care about the preseason opponents, check out Jeff Fisher’s video interview on the official site.  I frankly don’t care who they play, but will note I sensed an element of frustration last preseason starting off facing the Bills with a new offensive scheme and the Bucs with a new coach, scheme, and quarterback, and now the Titans are starting the preseason against another team with a new coach and scheme in Seattle, and then facing two teams with new starting QBs from Week 1 2009.  True, the Titans have faced Matts Leinart and Moore before, and neither team is likely to have overhauled its offense much, but it’s still a challenge.  One interesting note from the interview: Fisher says the Saints will be a preseason ending opponent not just this year but also in the future-he mentions a home-and-away, but I’m guessing they’ve talked about a 4 game series.