Terry McCormick is reporting that Chris Simms is expected to come to Nashville tonight and work out for the Titans tomorrow.  McCormick also speculates that Simms is the frontrunner to be added to the Titans roster.  One interesting note from the article is that the Chiefs worked Simms out but decided to sign Ingle Martin instead.

It is good they are giving Simms a look.  He is a better option than Joey Harrington, Quinn Gray, and Doug Johnson, all of whom the Titans took a look at today.

Simms, if signed, will back up Kerry Collins while Vince Young is out with the knee injury that we are still waiting to learn how long it will sideline him.

As TrenchantTitans mentioned, the Kansas City Chiefs have signed Ingle Martin off of the Titans' practice squad.  The Titans had a chance to promote Martin to the active roster to keep him here, but they decided not too.  I mean what is the point in having more than 1 quarterback on your roster anyway?

This makes absolutely no sense to me.  Now the Titans have to sign someone before the game this weekend to backup Kerry Collins, unless of course Vince Young doesn't really have a serious knee injury.  We are still waiting on the results of the MRI that VY apparently skipped yesterday.

Martin also signs with a team that the Titans face later on this season.  I am not sure how much that really matters, but I would say it has to give the Chiefs at least a slight advantage.

I have no idea what is going on with this organization.

Terry McCormick is reporting that the Titans are bringing in Joey Harrington and Quinn Gray today.  They obviously have to make some type of QB move if Vince Young is going to be out.  I would rather see them promote Ingle Martin from the practice squad than bring in either of these guys to be the #2.  

Now signing one of these guys doesn't necessarily mean they still wouldn't promote Ingle because they could always carry 3 guys.  They haven't done that for the last couple of years, but they need another guy in here learning the offense in case Kerry Collins goes down as well.

The Titans have started the process of trimming their roster down to 53 players.  While not cuts are official yet, some of them have leaked out.  The players that have been cut so far are Biren Ealy, Jamie Petrowski, Ingle Martin, John Vaughn, Cary Williams, Edward Williams, Tony Joiner, Omar Cuff, Marquice Cole, Tuff Harris, Jerrell Freeman, Isaac Snell, Jason Murphy, Enoka Lucas, and Fernando Velasco.

Ealy was a guy a lot of us rooted for last seaosn, but he didn't seem to improve any from when he first got here until now. 

The fact that they cut Vaughn is a good sign that Rob Bironas is healthy enough to kick next weekend.

The Titans still have several moves that have to be made before the 3 p.m. deadline.  Stay tuned..

[UPDATE]- DT Antonio Mookie Johnson has also been released.  Good thing I had him down as a lock yesterday.  Johnson was a 5th round pick last season, but missed the whole year after tearing his ACL in the preseason.  He is a good candidate for the practice squad.

[UPDATE 2]- FB Casey Cramer, DE Sean Conover, DE Eric Taylor and FB Jeremy Cain have also been released. 

[UPDATE 3]- Well, another of my locks, S Calvin Lowry, bites the dust.

[UPDATE 4]- WR Roydell Williams is the final cut to bring the roster to 53.  This comes a year after he tied for the team lead in receptions.  Jeff Fisher had said before last week that Roydell needed a big week to stay, but most of us here agreed that Fisher was just trying to light a fire under Roydell.  Apparently he wasn't kidding.

The defense played a pretty good game Friday night.  The Raiders are going to have a pretty good offense this season with the running back combo of Justin Fargas and Darren McFadden.  JaMarcus Russell looked pretty good as well.  That TD pass to Zach Miller was a perfect throw against good coverage.  My only real complaint about the defense was they didn't get much pressure on Russell, and when they did, they allowed him to move around and make some plays.  The only player that could bring him down, oddly enough, was Reynaldo Hill.  Some thoughts on individual defensive players:

Eric King- King had an up and down night.  He looked silly early when he got juked out of his pants, but came back to make a break up a pass intended for Ronald Curry on 3rd down.  Later Curry put a move on him that left him standing still.  After seeing King start one game, I would say he is better than Reynaldo Hill, but he is not anywhere close to starting over a healthy Nick Harper.

Stephen Tulloch- I really like watching Tulloch play.  He did get blown up by Fargas outside linebacker positions so he is the next guy on the field if any of the linebackers get injured.

Albert Haynesworth- Fat Albert blew a couple of plays up.  He looks to be in good shape and ready for another Pro Bowl season.

Cortland Finnegan- That was money well spent.  He is always around the ball, and he is always knocking people off of their feet.  He made a really nice play against the screen pass to keep it from becoming a big gainer.

William Hayes- The kid looks athletic.  He was in the backfiel a couple of times and made a nice play to stop McFadden on a stretch play.

The passing game was terrible Friday night.  There is really nothing else to say about it.  Vince Young and Kerry Collins both seemed completely lost out there, and the receiver didn't do anything to help them out.  The Titans actually ran the ball really well.  Some individual thoughts:

Vince Young- VY looked great on the first series.  He made a great throw to Bo Scaife, who had a good game, on the second series, but it was all down hill from there.  The biggest things I noticed was that VY was back in the habit of not setting his feet and stepping into his throws which is what keeps him from being accurate.

LenDale White- White looked shifty and ran the ball hard all night. 

Chris Johnson- I was so sad when he missed the ball on his first kickoff return chance.  CJ is an impressive runner.  He was very close to breaking another TD run.  The one thing he did wrong Friday night was not concentrate on balls thrown to him.  It looked like he was looking to run before he caught the ball.

Justin Gage- He only made one catch, but it was a good one on a ball that was not well thrown.

Paul Williams- He has to be on life support at this point after another bad penalty and another couple of dropped passes.

Lavelle Hawkins- This was the coming out party for The Hawk.  He got lit up on the first pass he caught and help on.  The 51 yard TD catch was awesome.  He made a nice move after catching the ball to spring himself free.

Ingle Martin- Martin did a really good job leading the team down the field to set up the winning TD pass.  The Titans will probably only carry two quarterbacks on the roster, but Martin is looking he might deserve a spot.

Preseason 101: Never get too excited or too disappointed because of the performance in one preseason game.  I think we were all, myself included, guilty of getting too excited about last week's game, so watching tonight made us more frustrated than it would have otherwise.

The offense was ugly tonight.  I don't want to see another 30 comments about how Kerry Collins should be the starter.  Was Vince Young bad tonight?  Yes.  Was Collins any better?  No.  The quarterback is not the problem with the current state of the offense.  Lavelle Hawkins made a great play tonight.  Unfortunately he is the only person on the offensive side of the ball that made a play.  If the Titans don't get some receivers to step up, it doesn't matter who is taking the snaps.

The defense was solid against the run.  They were not very good against the pass.  The pressure was sporadic at best, and JaMarcus Russell did a great job of moving around in the pocket to make some plays.  He made a great throw against good coverage from Keith Bulluck for the touchdown.

If you are going to judge who the starter should be from this game, you have to pick Ingle Martin.  He lead a fantastic drive down the field to set up the game winning field goal by John Vaughn.

Don't let yourself lose sleep over this game.  There is still a lot of work that will be done before the games count.  I will be back tomorrow with some observations from watching the game on the DVR.

Jim Wyatt's practice report.  Highlights:

Player of day: Receiver Brandon Jones.

From Terry McCormick:

"Brandon has had some good practices and he’s starting to make some plays, and I think he’s starting to feel comfortable with what he’s doing,” Heimerdinger said. “But all of them are doing some good things. So it’s kind of going back and forth with all those guys. But Brandon has really made some good plays lately and doing some good things.

“He’s doing better. He’s getting in the right spots. He doesn’t have any mental busts right now, and he’s making some tough catches the last couple of days. Brandon is doing some good things.”

Could this be the year he finally lives up to his potential?

Vince Young connected with receiver Justin Gage on a nice pass downfield early in practice, but was inconsistent overall. He was nearly picked off by safety Chris Hope, and many of his throws were off target. His best pass was a long bomb to Biren Ealy.

I think this will be what we will read pretty much every day in camp.  It is going to take VY a while to get adjusted to Dinger's system.

The Titans got a brief scare when defensive end Jevon Kearse came out complaining about his right foot. Trainers examined the foot and Kearse eventually returned to practice.

That sounds familiar.

Following practice, quarterback Ingle Martin booted 10-of-14 field goals, including a 52-yarder with distance to spare. Martin was a high school quarterback/kicker at Montgomery Bell Academy. He’s supposed to kick in the afternoon practice.

In high school my football team scrimmaged Martin's MBA team.  I watched him kick, and I don't doubt that he could be an effective insurance plan for Rob Bironas if his groin issue lingers.

The Titans take the field again this afternoon at 3:30.  It will be the first practice in full pads so we should learn a lot this evening.