In news that proves why I should wait another week before writing 10,000 words about fantasy football and attractive women, the Tennessee Titans shocked Chris Johnson – Nay, the world! – when they announced that they were prepared to make him the highest paid running back in NFL history. Titans GM Mike Reinfeldt said that as soon as Johnson ends his holdout and returns to camp, he will honor the elite RB with the contract he deserves.

“We’re willing to make him the highest-paid running back in the history of the NFL,’’ Reinfeldt said. “That’s kind of where we are. … We’d like to have him here, and we’d like to be fair with him.” (Via The Tennessean with one hell of a Burnsy-esque photoshop)

When asked how he plans to pay that kind of money, Reinfeldt responded: “Have you seen the rest of this roster? We could sign two of him.” As for Johnson, he claims this is all completely news to him.

“I am surprised,” Johnson said of Reinfeldt’s “statement about offering to make me the highest-paid running back. Neither me nor Joel have received any offer from the Titans. Maybe they talked, but I guarantee we never received any offer.”

Johnson has every right to be skeptical of Reinfeldt’s statement, but it wouldn’t hurt for the mouse to take the cheese and just show up to camp. As long as Reinfeldt isn’t standing there with a giant check for “$1,000,000,000,000,000″ and whispering, “Do us a solid and don’t cash this until 2017,” it could be in Johnson’s best interest to go. But some people disagree.

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Former Tennessee Titans wide receiver Randy Moss announced via his agent yesterday that after 13 seasons he has retired from the NFL. Or you could perhaps say that no teams wanted to bother with the 34-year old pain in the ass anymore. Either way, one of the most exciting, explosive, and maddeningly arrogant athletes to ever play pro football is done.

Now the poets of the printed word can spend the next few months celebrating or denigrating the man who once gloriously disgusted Joe Buck. Peter King called him a first ballot Hall-of-Famer while Michael Rosenberg asks the standard questions. Mike Florio gave Moss the clap. I mean, 10 claps. And you can be sure that the rest of the cliche clan will be close behind.

Too bad it’s all premature.

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Below is a video of Randy Moss talking to incarcerated kids at the West Virginia Industrial Home for Youth. Your first impression of that sentence might be “so what, is this like Michael Vick going into a Petsmart and telling pet owners not to roll their dogs in glass,” but I don’t want to go there. At least, not all the way there. Moss is doing a good thing by talking to these kids, and from the video he appears to have reached the point in his life where he’s going to be a sane, rational grown up. Good for him.

Of course, I’ve never understood the “who better to talk to kids about poor choices than somebody who has made so many of them” talking point, as I would much rather hear about it from someone who figured it out beforehand and didn’t have to beat his girlfriend or sh:t-talk the Marshall plane crash first. But I also don’t think being good at football should excuse you from rolling your pets in glass and setting them on fire, so I might not be on the wavelength of your average at-risk football teen.

In all seriousness, more athletes should participate in programs like these, and fewer in programs where they try to out-dance Kendra Wilkinson.

[H/T Last Angry Fan]

Tennessee Titans running back Chris Johnson got a visit from the Orlando Police Department on Tuesday. The reasons for that visit are conflicting; the police say they saw an unusual amount of television cameras at his house, so they investigated to make sure nobody was dealing drugs. Johnson says it was because he’s young, black and famous. No word on whether or not Johnson had money hanging out the anus.

The report, from his Twitter:

Y did the police just walk in my condo saying they think it’s drug activity because it’s alot of traffic but it was the MTV camera crew. … Hard being young, black, and rich

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The NFL’s longest-tenured head coach is on his way out. Jeff Fisher, who was coaching the Tennessee Titans as early as 1994 (when they were still the Houston Oilers), is packing up his office.

According to an NFL source close to the situation in Tennessee, the move could be announced as early as Friday, although it’s uncertain if Fisher’s departure will be termed a firing, a resignation or a mutual parting of ways.

Though information about Fisher’s situation was scarce Thursday, it was confirmed by a league source that he will not return to coach the team in 2011, contrary to what was previously expected. Fisher was said to be in the process of negotiating the terms of his departure with Titans owner Bud Adams.

–SI.com.

Fisher turns 53 next month; he was due to make over $6 million coaching the Titans in 2011. Hmmmph. So instead of keeping either Fisher or his adversarial quarterback Vince Young, Titans owner Bud Adams seems to be casting both of them loose. This is just like that Shakespearean play where the one guy is really sad and then he endures a life-changing event, but then life still sucks. Which one was that again?

Moral of the story: Do not mess with Bud Adams, because he will F you right in your A.

Tennessee Titans quarterback (for now) Vince Young really is a double threat. Not only can he do ridiculous things, he can say them, too. Consider his comments in the wake of the team’s comments that they would either trade or cut Young before 2011, with my added emphasis:

“I’m going to go into [a new] organization, the team, and compete. That’s all I can do, and let them make their own decision after that,” Young said. “Definitely I am a starting quarterback, an elite quarterback in the NFL. I want to go ahead and start. But like it always is, the coaches have the last word.”

–Marcellus Wiley/ESPN via PFT.

That’s right, Vince. You’re an elite NFL quarterback. Just look at all those times that you started all 16 games in a season, or all those years you threw for 3,000 yards or more, or all of those playoff games that you won…Because that’s what elite quarterbacks do.

But you never did any of those things, Vince. No, your MO is to show up shirtless in clubs with other dudes and running out on your coach, to the point where he’s either calling the cops to make sure you don’t kill yourself or fetching your shoulder pads out of the stands. Great job, Vince. See you in Cincinnati’s training camp next summer.