Odds are not great that the Titans will have a successful season this year.

Of course, that’s only if you measure success (as many Titans fans do) by whether the team reaches the Super Bowl. Jeff Fisher’s team has as good a chance as any of the main contenders of getting back to the Big Game. It’s just that the odds of reaching the Super Bowl for any team—even one that enters the season as a prohibitive favorite—aren’t really any better than your chances of rolling a lucky seven with your first toss of the dice in Vegas.

A lot of things can happen on the way to the Super Bowl, and most of them are bad. Ask last year’s anointed teams. The Rams’ defense evaporated after a 6-0 start, and Kurt Warner was slow to regain his old form after an injury. The Colts squandered three winnable games, forcing them on the road in the playoffs. Injuries bedeviled Jacksonville.

Of this elite group, only the Titans performed as expected. But they also suffered an Al Gore-ishly cruel fate, losing to Baltimore in a playoff game they statistically dominated—primarily because of just two misbegotten plays.

The two Super Bowl entrants, Baltimore and the New York Giants, weren’t even supposed to be there, at least if you believed the Media Geniuses. And even though the Ravens were being hailed as this year’s Most Likely to Succeed Themselves, the NFL’s law of averages is not on their side. (Case in point: The day after the preceding sentence was written in early August, the Ravens’ Jamal Lewis crumpled to the turf with a season-ending knee injury; without him, all bets on the Ravens suddenly were off.)

When you look at all the mines strewn along the path of any Super Bowl aspirant, you must view the woebegone Buffalo Bills with admiration bordering on awe. In losing four straight Super Bowls, the Bills pulled off the greatest achievement in the recent history of the NFL. No other team has come close even to reaching—much less winning—four of those Roman-numeral games in consecutive years.

Ironically, not being the preseason favorite should come as good news for Tennessee, whose own aspirations were mocked by this same law of averages last January. This time around, the Titans figure once again to be left standing after the New Year arrives. That’s no surprise. What is mind-boggling, even for long-time observers of the league, is how precarious that perch can be.

Look at the schedule, and you’ll see only four dates when picking a Tennessee victory is a no-brainer: two games against Cleveland and two with Cincinnati. Such is the competitive balance in the NFL, however, that even the bottom-feeders have plenty of dangerous bite. Against each of those teams last season, the Titans played a game that was anyone’s for the taking in the fourth quarter.

For that matter, 11 of Tennessee’s 16 regular-season games were decided in the final period—four on the final drive, two on the final play. That’s the other thing that makes the schedule so difficult to play and even harder to forecast. A bad bounce here, an ill-timed penalty there, and one muffed assignment anywhere, and it’s not just conceivable but believable that the Titans find themselves gasping with a 1-4 mark by the middle of October.

Complicating the uncertainty, the team itself may not be quite as predictable as it was a year ago, when almost all the key personnel returned from the season before. This year new faces will abound.

There will be at least three new starters on defense, including two in the secondary. There’s a new fullback (albeit a good one); a new placekicker (albeit a very good one); and a new backup to Eddie George. And a new defensive coordinator and a new secondary coach. And while the Titans arguably have made upgrades with Kevin Carter as a bookend to Jevon Kearse at DE and with kicker Joe Nedney replacing Suddenly-Not-So-Automatic Al Del Greco, you can never be certain how new players will blend (paging Carl Pickens) with those on hand until they have shared a season together.

The Titans themselves expect to be better this season. They think their overall defense will be even stronger than the unit that led the AFC last year. They believe they have a better, if less pedigreed, group of receivers.

On the other hand, there’s that schedule. It’s not scary just because it’s the worksheet reserved for first-place teams, the leveler that helps produce the NFL’s famed parity. In this league, everyone’s schedule is scary.

Go down the list, and you can find a defensible reason to predict a Titans loss in almost every game.

The Miami Dolphins, who hit town this week, are an improved team with a solid defense who’ll be stoked to steal the opener.

The Jaguars, though their offensive line is depleted, kept the core of their team. They still pack four of the AFC’s most dangerous offensive weapons, they’ll be especially dangerous in Jacksonville, and they have reversed roles in their rivalry with the Titans: Now they’re the team with something to prove.

Baltimore. You remember those guys.

Then comes Tampa Bay. Last year, the Bucs were a strong Super Bowl prospect. Now they have an experienced QB and an even nastier defense.

Just when the Titans might think they can relax, they go to Detroit, a team that plays well at home and is more talented than its 9-7 record last year suggests.

Pittsburgh, the next stop, brutally battled Tennessee more toughly than anyone but Baltimore last year.

December looms with two potentially unpleasant road trips, to Minnesota and Oakland, both of whom played in the title games of their respective conferences last season. Sandwiched between them is Green Bay, whose powers may be diminished from its halcyon years but whose victims in 2000 included such luminaries as Minnesota (twice), Tampa, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia.

Of course, no one believes the Titans will finish 4-12, or even 8-8—or, really, even 10-6. But if they wind up between 11-5 and 13-3, as many forecast, it won’t be because their talent is so vastly superior to the more middling outfits.

Fortunately for Tennessee fans, the Titans have two powerful difference-makers—both provided courtesy of coach Jeff Fisher—that help minimize the impact of capricious factors like injuries and bad bounces. Fisher will tell you that the players make the difference. What he doesn’t tell you, in his modesty, is that the difference between his players and those of an underachieving 9-7 team (like the ones the Titans fielded several years ago) is that the Titans have a system and a mental outlook that help them win.

Especially on defense, the Titans’ style is not dictated principally by the skills of the individual players, creating a whole that isn’t much more than the sum of its parts. Instead, they’re more like a college team: Players are plugged into a defensive scheme that was in place before they arrived and may well be there after they’re gone. The offense, to be sure, is calibrated to take advantage of the talents of Eddie George, Steve McNair, and Frank Wycheck. Yet even more, it is tailored to Fisher’s philosophy: Control the ball, dictate field position, and physically wear down your opponent.

Read Fisher’s interview with the Scene (p. 9), and you’ll appreciate how much importance he attaches to a winning attitude among the players. There’s a calm confidence in the club that they’re going to win close games in the fourth quarter. Three years ago, the Titans were a team that allowed victories to elude them at the end of a game. (Remember when San Diego’s glacially fast Ryan Leaf ran 30 yards to set up a score; or when they couldn’t locate their kicker in time to hit a last-second field goal against Chicago; or when they couldn’t hold Seattle even after taking the lead with less than a minute to play?) That team would not have managed the Music City Miracle, nor pulled off the two Ws last year over Pittsburgh, nor put themselves in a position to win in the final seconds at Buffalo.

The common denominator in these intangible qualities is the coach, whose devotion to detail and knowledge of relevant minutiae make it much easier for his team to play with confidence. (Remember, the Titans practiced Home Run Throwback every week.)

Recently, radio announcer Mike Keith was telling a local sportswriter about how the temperature affects a team’s kicking game. When it’s cold, the ball is harder, hangs less, and makes kickoffs shorter. Result: The average starting field position in the NFL improves by four yards in November and December.

“I’d never heard that,” said the writer.

“Me neither,” replied Keith—whose appetite for arcane statistics rivals that of a baseball junkie—”until Jeff Fisher told me.”

Fisher will readily point out to you that only players make plays (which is a little like saying that generals don’t win battles). George or McNair or Blaine Bishop may be the Titans’ MVPs. The more you watch them, though—and watch teams like Oakland, whose progression over the past two years has been like Tennessee’s—the more you appreciate the value of having a Most Valuable Non-Player. That, more than anything else, could be the difference between a Super Bowl berth and a disappointing season.