Preliminary talks reopen with Haynesworth

Negotiations between the Tennessee Titans and defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth are back on. File

Negotiations between the Tennessee Titans and defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth are back on as of Monday, albeit in a very preliminary stage.

Monday marked the first day the Titans and Haynesworth’s agent Chad Speck were allowed to begin talks again after the Titans franchised him in February and were unable to reach a long-term extension by July 15.

“Clearly we’ve expressed a great deal of interest, as he has, in working things out,” Titans coach Jeff Fisher said. “We’ll move forward but the most important thing right now is the playoffs and getting him ready. Getting him back on the practice field, getting him ready to play at the level he was before he got hurt.”

Haynesworth, who reached performance incentives negotiated into his franchise tender in order to become an unrestricted free agent in 2009, missed the final two games of the regular season with a sprained MCL.

General manager Mike Reinfeldt said last week he would make contact with Speck to reopen talks on Monday, and Speck acknowledged a brief conversation.

“Mike called me today and expressed the Titans interest to begin negotiations on a long term deal for Albert,” Speck said in an e-mail. “We had a preliminary discussion and our talks are in the very early stages. It is my intent to keep any future conversations I have with the Titans regarding Albert’s contract private for the time being. I would echo Coach Fisher’s comments by saying that Albert is focused on getting his knee healthy and continuing his dominating play in the playoffs.”

Fisher indicated Monday that he hopes to have several players who have missed time with injuries back on the practice field possibly during this week’s bye week. That could include Haynesworth, defensive Kyle Vanden Bosch (groin) and center Kevin Mawae (elbow), all of whom have missed recent games with injuries.

Fisher indicated that the Titans would take a training camp approach to this week as they prepare for an as yet undetermined opponent. He indicated the Titans might even go in full pads once or twice before they play their first playoff game in the divisional round.

“We’re going to work to fine tune, to stay sharp to get better. We’re going to compete against ourselves,” Fisher said. “We’re not going to prepare against a particular team on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, if you will, but we’re going to go out there as if it’s training camp and work. And that’s going to be the most important thing, in addition to bringing back some of the guys, or at least trying to get back some of the guys that we possibly can.”

SET FOR SATURDAY: The Titans don’t know who they will face in the AFC Divisional Playoffs in two weeks, but at least now they know when.

The Titans will play host to Baltimore, Indianapolis or San Diego on Saturday, Jan. 10 at 3:30 p.m. CST.

Tennessee (13-3) will host the first game of the divisional round of playoffs that day with the Carolina Panthers hosting Minnesota, Arizona or Atlanta in the evening game on Saturday.

“You potentially have an extra day on the backend without travel, which gives you an extra day of rest and advantage,” Fisher said. “But the league will be wise about that. They tend not to make somebody travel and go on a short week for a championship game but it gives us a chance. And knowing now it gives us a chance to go ahead and plan a schedule.”

The Sunday games will feature the New York Giants hosting either Philadelphia, Atlanta or Arizona at noon, and the late game will feature the Pittsburgh Steelers in the other AFC semifinal against either the Colts, Chargers or Miami Dolphins.

NO REGRETS: Fisher said the Titans’ vanilla approach in their 23-0 loss to the Indianapolis Colts would not have any different on Sunday had the Colts or some other team had anything riding on a Titans victory regarding their playoff situation.

As it was, both the Titans and Colts were locked into their respective seeds, and both teams played backups extensively in the game.

Last year, the game meant nothing to the Colts, but was a win and in situation for Tennessee. The Cleveland Browns needed Indianapolis to defeat the Titans to get them into the playoffs.

“We were focused purely on ourselves. If you’re asking if the roles were reversed last year in Indy, if there were another team involved and we were in Indy’s role, we would have done the same thing,” Fisher said.

Fisher also said lackluster performance was over and would not be reviewed in any way with the team.

“We agreed when we walked out those doors yesterday that we wouldn’t revisit the game, wouldn’t bring it up, wouldn’t look at it. We’re going to move forward,” Fisher said.

Linebacker Keith Bulluck said Sunday’s scenario of a meaningless regular-season finale was actually worse than a preseason game.

“It was worse than a preseason game, because at least in a preseason game you get to root for guys that are trying to make the team and guys who have been working all camp and are going out there and trying to earn a roster spot,” Bulluck said.

He added that while the Titans wanted to win the game, there was indeed nothing on the line for them Sunday.

“We went out there to play and we wanted to win that game with the players we had out there,” Bulluck said. “To be very frank, I didn’t care about that game, but that doesn’t mean my attitude that I took out on the football field was that I didn’t care, because I did care and a I played hard. We just didn’t score any points and we didn’t stop them enough times. That game is not going to have any effect on us for what goes on for the rest of the year.”

POTENTIAL INTEREST?: Fisher said he and the organization would not confirm nor deny whether any assistant coaches have been contacted to fill any potential head coaching vacancies around the NFL.

Most notably, defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz’s name has been floated around some head coaching vacancies in Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis.

“This situation comes up on occasion when the season’s over and our philosophy, our perspective is we’re not going to confirm or deny whether we’ve been contacted or not,” Fisher said. “I believe that’s up to the contacting club and so we’ll leave that up to the requesting club."