Every week of the regular season, fans of their favorite team use Monday to overreact based on what happened to their teams on Sunday.  The first Monday of the season is usually the worst for this, so it’s time to talk you either down from the ledge or out of that “Superman” outfit.

The Titans Are A Contender

Tennessee looked great on Sunday as they dismantled the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 42-14.  Marcus Mariota was brilliant and Jameis Winston was terrible, making the Titans brass look like geniuses for holding on to the second-overall pick in the draft.

“It means we’re 1-0. For me, it’s taking it one day at a time and just executing to the best of my abilities,” Mariota, the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner said. “It’s a good start for us, but it’s just the first game. We’ve got to continue to get better and not focus on stats.”

Before we jump on to that Titans bandwagon, let’s take a step back for a moment and examine the facts.

• The Buccaneers haven’t won a home game since 2013.
• Tampa Bay was the worst team in football last season.
• Few NFL coaches do a worse job of preparing their team than Lovie Smith.

The Titans also won their first game of last season and went on to lose 14 of their next 15.  They certainly look like they’ll be improved, but even playing in the AFC South, Tennessee looks to be at least another year or two away from contending.

The Bad Teams Are Still Bad

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Oakland Raiders, Cleveland Browns and Jacksonville Jaguars finished in either last place or next to last (Jacksonville) in their respective divisions in 2014.

They seemingly picked up where they left off on Sunday as they were cumulatively outscored 126-46.

“First and foremost you can’t turn the ball over,” Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel said after committing three turnovers in the team’s 31-10 loss on Sunday. “That one throw on the pick, that’s got to be outside. That’s got to be our ball or nobody’s. That kind of slowed our momentum a little bit. Little things, like he said, a couple of third downs where we get the conversions and then we have the penalty or something like that. Just the little things that hindered us and nagged us throughout the day that I think finally in the second half caught up to us a little bit.”

Those four teams combined for 12 turnovers on Sunday.

“It is a good learning opportunity,” Jacksonville Jaguars second-year quarterback Blake Bortles said following a game where he led his offense to just nine points and threw two interceptions, including a pick-six to Josh Norman. “Obviously we struggled. We started slow. We had a lot of missed opportunities. It wasn’t so much what they did to us, but it was us beating ourselves. Its fixable things, which it’s good stuff to learn from. And we will learn from it and move on quickly.”

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and these offenses were some of the worst in the NFL over the last several seasons and they will not be fixed in one offseason.

It takes years of good drafting and young quarterbacks to develop into franchise quarterbacks for these teams to become functional on offense.

Better days are ahead, but they won’t be here right away.

Reason To Worry In Indy?

The Indianapolis Colts began this season as a top betting favorite to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl.  The reason why everyone is so high on the Colts is due to their postseason run that landed them in the AFC title game last year and their big-named offseason additions which included Frank Gore, Andre Johnson and Trent Cole.

Undoubtedly, many will be bouncing off the Indy bandwagon after their 27-14 bludgeoning at the hands of the Buffalo Bills.

“They beat us pretty bad,” Colts quarterback Andrew Luck said. “You don’t let one game necessarily define you, but that doesn’t make it any easier of a pill to swallow.”

Indy is more of a fantasy football team than a legitimate championship football team.  They have a great quarterback and flashy weapons on the outside, but they are very inexperienced in the trenches and they haven’t drafted particularly well around Luck.

The Colts will rebound and win the AFC South.  That’s almost a given as long as Luck stays healthy.

At this point for Indianapolis, expectations are Super Bowl or bust and that might not be realistic with this year’s squad.  If you take away the Tennessee and Jacksonville games last year, the Colts were actually outscored by 10 points cumulatively for the season.  With beyond their prime additions, it’s not likely that Indy can make up the 38-point gap between themselves and the New England Patriots.

Is The Dominant Seattle Defense Done?

The two-time defending NFC Champion Seattle Seahawks lost their opener to the St. Louis Rams.

As surprising as an outcome as that was, it shouldn’t be.  The Rams always play them tough, especially at home where they beat Seattle last year.

What was surprising is that the Rams, a team that finished 28th in the NFL in offense a season ago, was able to score 34 points against them, while committing three turnovers.

“Normally when we get three turnovers and they get one, we win,” Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll said. “We’ve been doing that for a long time.”

It’s very difficult for a team that’s played in as many big games as Seattle has to get up for regular season opponents, especially when their opponent was a last-place team.

With that said, without Kam Chancellor patrolling the secondary, the Seahawks are more beatable through the air than they’ve been in years.

Seattle will play better football defensively, but it’s difficult to maintain focus throughout an entire season.  The Seahawks will be in the postseason, but don’t look for another lengthy run unless they can get home field advantage.