Titans vs Steelers Preview and Pick

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The Pittsburgh Steelers begin their journey to winning back-to-back Super Bowls on Thursday night on their home turf against the Tennessee Titans. These two teams met late in the year last season and Pittsburgh was absolutely manhandled 31-14 in Tennessee. Thus, this is a big time revenge game for the defending Super Bowl Champs and they should be extremely fired up for this one in front of the home fans.

This year’s Steelers team will look much like last year’s Super Bowl team as they only lost two starters to free agency (cornerback Bryant McFadden and linebacker Larry Foote). Defensively, the Steelers should still be pretty sound and difficult to score on. In 2008, they were the number one defense in all of football and number two in rush defense. Tennessee is primarily a running team so I expect Pittsburgh to stack the box to stop Chris Johnson and LenDale White and blitz early and often against Kerry Collins. The key to this game will be whether or not Tennessee can run on this Pittsburgh defense. If they can, they have a chance to win the ball game but if not it might be a long night for the Titans.

Meanwhile Tennessee has upgraded their receiving corp and should improve as they were one of the worst passing offenses in the NFL in ’08. They added Nate Washington from the Steelers they will be facing and drafted a talented player in Kenny Britt from Rutgers. However, this will still be a run first team with Chris Johnson emerging as one of the top backs in football. The big missing piece is the loss of defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth. We will find out just how much he will be missed on Thursday night because if a healthy Willie Parker can run on this defense, that will open up the play action pass for Ben Roethlisberger and Santonio Holmes.

All things considered this should be an entertaining game to watch with two quality football teams going at it. However, I think Pittsburgh as the upper hand with a better defense and the better big play quarterback. They also have the emotional advantage playing at home in a revenge game. This line opened up at Pittsburgh minus five but has moved to minus 6 over the last week. I think Pittsburgh will stop the run and make more big plays on offense for the Titans to cover this number.

Titans vs. Steelers Betting Trends:

Tennessee is 4-10 ATS in its last 14 games when playing on the road against Pittsburgh
Tennessee is 4-2 SU in its last 6 games when playing on the road against Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is 7-2 ATS in its last 9 games
Pittsburgh is 9-1 SU in its last 10 games

BetVega.com leans Pittsburgh -6