(My Sportsbook) - When the calendar still reads September, and your team is already within sight of its entire total of losses from the year before, things are bound to get a bit tense.

That is the situation currently confronting the Tennessee Titans, who after finishing an NFL-best 13-3 a season ago, have begun their 2009 campaign with bitter losses to the Steelers (13-10 in overtime) and Texans (34-31).

This past Sunday's defeat, which came in Tennessee's home opener and on 10 days rest, was particularly galling to Titans observers both inside and outside the organization.

A defense going through a transition, with Chuck Cecil having taken over as coordinator from the departed Jim Schwartz, and All-Pro interior line linch pin Albert Haynesworth now a member of the Washington Redskins, has not been much of a credit to the cause.

After allowing both Hines Ward and Santonio Holmes to go over the 100-yard receiving mark in the opener in Pittsburgh, Tennessee had no clue against the Texans' aerial combination of Matt Schaub and Andre Johnson in Week 2.

Schaub was a crisp 25-of-39 for 357 yards, four touchdowns and nary a turnover or sack absorbed against the Titans. Two of the scoring strikes went to Johnson, who caught 10 balls for 149 yards and abused the Titans secondary throughout.

Johnson's second TD, a 72-yarder in the second quarter that cut the score from 21-7 to 21-14, came on a blown coverage. Cornerback Nick Harper started the play defending Johnson, but passed him off to safety Michael Griffin on a zone call. But Griffin failed to pick up Johnson, who scored a touchdown as easy as an elite-level Pro Bowl receiver can wish to score.

And though Griffin was the one most responsible for the big play, that's not who Harper was pointing the finger toward afterward.

"There were some plays that happened on my side, and (the Texans) flip-flopped and ran the exact same play on the other side and we still didn't get any stops," Harper said after the game. "That tells me we didn't make any corrections on the sideline but they made all the corrections, and that hurt us."

Harper's comments will shine a bright, hot spotlight on Cecil, who is attempting to maintain the standing of a defense that had matured into one of the best in the league with Schwartz in command.

But head coach Jeff Fisher stood up for Cecil, and took umbrage with Harper's post-game approach to dealing with the team's second straight close loss.

"Let me set the record straight here," said Fisher on Monday. "When you are a good football team and you start off the season [0-2] there is going to be frustration, OK? And the only way you get out of it is you avoid pointing fingers at anybody.

"Everybody accepts the blame and you move on. There were adjustments made on the sideline for each and every thing that we saw. There was an adjustment made for that last big pass that they made, I heard it. The players alluding to the fact that we're having trouble making adjustments need to pay better attention to what is going on the sideline."

The quality of the Titans' next opponent, the New York Jets, is going to command the full attention of the coaching staff, Harper and all of his teammates.

The Jets (2-0) have been one of the major surprises in the NFL through two weeks, dominating both the Texans (24-7) and Patriots (16-9) defensively and failing to yield an offensive touchdown in their first eight quarters of play.

If Tennessee can't get it together starting with this week, the hole the Titans will have dug themselves in a quality AFC South might prove to be too difficult to dig out from. Clearly, Fisher is focusing on the short-term in the hopes of a payoff down the road.

"You know what, we're just going to keep getting better," said Fisher. "That's all we do. We take it one day at a time just keep getting better, not thinking about playoffs, keep working on the little things."

COLTS: Could anyone other than Peyton Manning have pulled off the feat that the venerable Indianapolis quarterback achieved on Monday night?

The scoreboard at the end of the primetime duel at the Miami Dolphins read 27-23 in favor of the visiting Colts...not so surprising for those who have seen Manning win a number of similarly close affairs over the course of his 12-year career.

But Manning managed to lead Indy to victory during a game in which the Dolphins' ground-control offense limited his time with the ball to a paltry 14:53, the lowest amount of time of possession for a winning team since the statistic was first kept in 1977. The Colts (2-0) ran just 35 plays, 25 of which took place on the team's five scoring drives. Big plays, including an 80-yard touchdown pass to Dallas Clark on the first play from scrimmage, and a game-winning 48-yard catch-and-run for Pierre Garcon in the fourth quarter, saw Manning and company emphasizing quality over quantity in terms of the plays they ran.

Manning, who finished 14-of-23 for 303 yards and the two TDs, passed Johnny Unitas as the winningest quarterback in Colts history, with 119 victories.

"Obviously he's a special guy," said head coach Jim Caldwell of Manning. "It's because he can do things like he did tonight. He can lead you on drives with just enough time left; he's very smart and handles things extremely well. We're certainly proud of him and of what he's been able to accomplish."

JAGUARS: David Garrard wasn't on the field when Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner was completing an NFL-record 26-of-28 passes in Jacksonville's 31-17 loss to the Arizona on Sunday.

He wasn't one of the players responsible for the blocked field goal that resulted in an easy Antrel Rolle touchdown and transformed the game from a close one into a runaway in the second quarter.

Garrard doesn't deserve as much of the criticism as he's receiving this week in the wake of the Jaguars' mostly awful, complacent performance in their home opener. Does that mean he's been good enough? Hardly.

Garrard was 23-of-42 for 282 yards, two touchdowns, two turnovers (one INT, one fumble), and four sacks absorbed in the Jaguars' loss, and many of his more positive moments came after Arizona had built a 24-3 lead and relaxed a bit defensively. Garrard missed throws, held onto the football too long, and for a second straight week showed precious little chemistry with new No. 1 receiver Torry Holt (6 receptions, 65 yards).

The portion of the relatively sparse announced crowd of 46,520 that stuck around into the second half grumbled with every Garrard misstep, though head coach Jack Del Rio does not look close to pulling the plug on the longtime Jag's third full year as the starter.

"David's our starting quarterback," Del Rio said definitively on Monday.

In reality, Jacksonville doesn't have a lot of great options behind Garrard. The only other QB on the roster at the moment is Luke McCown, who has been on the team for less than a month after being obtained in a cut-down-day trade with the Buccaneers. But more than that, Del Rio stressed the need to avoid panic despite the club's shoddy play thus far.

"When you're 0-2, there are a lot of naysayers that'll have their opinions, but we can't pay attention to that," Del Rio said. "If we had started 2-0, we wouldn't be getting these questions."

TEXANS: That sound you're hearing from the state of Texas is a collective sigh of relief. One week after stinking up Reliant Stadium in a surprising 24-7 loss to the Jets, Houston lived up to its preseason promise by going into Nashville and obtaining a 34-31 win over the reigning AFC South champion Titans.

For a week, the "same old Texans" chatter will die down, not that Houston doesn't have its problems to correct.

A Texans defense that made life easy for Mark Sanchez and the Jets in Week 1 put up little resistance against Titans running back Chris Johnson in Week 2, allowing Johnson to pile up a whopping 284 yards of total offense and score three long touchdowns.

And Johnson wasn't matched by Houston running back Steve Slaton, who has been curiously slow out of the gate. Slaton, who came on strong with over 1,500 yards of offense and 10 touchdowns during his rookie season, has generated just 51 yards on 26 carries in his first two games, with another 60 yards on six catches out of the backfield. Slaton has also fumbled three times.

"He can definitely run better," said head coach Gary Kubiak of Slaton. "But we can help him, too. My concern with him, as I told him [Monday], he got three balls on the ground in [26] carries in two games. I mean, that can't happen. That can't happen once. We're very fortunate: [Sunday] he gets two balls knocked out at some very important times in the game and [Texans tackle] Duane [Brown] gets them both. He had one protection issue during the game but as far as how many yards are there, what we're getting...those things are always going to be up and down."

This week, Slaton will be facing a Jaguars team that allowed 116 yards on 22 combined carries (5.3 yards per carry) for the Cardinals' Beanie Wells and Tim Hightower last Sunday.