It’s been a busy couple of offseasons in Tennessee.
Last year, it appeared that head coach Mike Vrabel had won over owner Amy Adams Strunk when he kept his job while general manager Jon Robinson was replaced by Ran Carthon. With veteran Ryan Tannehill and second-round draft pick Will Levis both on the roster, the Titans were looking to reload on the run, but the one constant appeared to be Vrabel’s presence on the sidelines.
So much for that.
The mindset in Tennessee appears to be that they have their “guy” at quarterback in Levis - more on that later - but they’ve certainly gotten to their current configuration in haphazard fashion. None of that will matter if the Titans win, but in a division that features C.J. Stroud in Houston and Trevor Lawrence in Jacksonville, there is no easy path to the playoffs, and Tennessee’s 6-11 record may have warped expectations given the dearth of talent on this roster.
State of the Roster
Let’s start with the positive: the Titans have a projected $75 million in cap space and the 7th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Beyond that, this team is close to starting from scratch. It appears that running back Derrick Henry will move on in free agency, and while 2022 was a down year by Henry’s standards, he still posted 1167 rushing yards and 12 rushing touchdowns, and there isn’t an obvious candidate to take on that work.
Whoever the running back is, he will be running behind an offensive line that is average at best; Peter Skoronski, the 11th overall pick of the 2023 NFL Draft, is a lock to return at guard, but the Andre Dillard experiment at left tackle blew up on the launch pad, and while it appears Dillon Radunz may have salvaged his career, Nicholas Petit-Frere went in the wrong direction after a decent showing in his rookie season.
At wide receiver, DeAndre Hopkins is one year older - and an odd fit on a rebuilding roster - while former first-round pick Treylon Burks is coming off a 16-catch season. Tight end Chigoziem Okonkwo brings something as a complementary receiver, but he’s not going to be the focal point of a passing game.
The defense is in better shape due to the presence of defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons and edge rusher Harold Landry, but both of those players are getting PAID on market-value contracts, while Denico Autry is set to hit free agency coming off a double-digit sack season. They’re getting decent value on Arden Key’s contract, but that’s small consolation given the number of holes this team has in the back end.
The reality is that Tennessee has missed on way too many transactions in recent years; in a vacuum, the trade for Julio Jones, picking Isaiah Wilson and Caleb Farley in the first round, trading A.J. Brown to draft Treylon Burks, or any of Tennessee’s other missteps would kill you, but the length of that list of grievances lets you know that those moves didn’t happen in a vacuum. This roster is in rough shape, whatever they get out of the quarterback.
The Quarterback
Will Levis is an interesting study at the quarterback position.
For starters, how a quarterback with Levis’s traits could have enough savvy to play at a competitive level during his rookie season and still go in the 2nd round of the draft in today’s NFL is baffling to me. Traits aren’t everything, but they do help to define a player’s ceiling, and in a league where we have seen players from Baker Mayfield to Mac Jones to Kenny Pickett go in the first round despite a lack of big-time attributes, I’m stunned that nobody rolled the dice on Levis. Joe Flacco’s run in Cleveland this season was a reminder of what the deep ball can add to an offense - and a reminder of how many quarterbacks starting in today’s league struggle to get the ball downfield if the pass isn’t executed with timing and rhythm.
Levis certainly doesn’t have that problem; though they don’t necessarily have other clear comparison points, Levis’s ability to deliver the ball downfield with velocity reminds me a lot of Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford. Levis also displayed good mobility, enough accuracy, and a reckless abandon in his playing style that makes him easy to cheer for, even if he’s going to have to cool it with using the “hit stick” if he’s going to survive as a franchise quarterback.
All the talk out of Tennessee is that Levis is their guy; as the head coach, Brian Callahan will play a role in his development, but it will also be interesting to see if Levis can make some adjustments to his game to increase the odds he will be available on a weekly basis, because I would guess that someone on Vrabel's coaching staff might have made that suggestion at some point this season.
Priorities at 7th Overall?
It’s early in draft season, but if I’m a Titans fan, I’m pretty happy when I look at the first mock drafts from NFL.com’s Daniel Jeremiah and Bucky Brooks and see a bunch of offensive tackles, wide receivers, and edge rushers in the mix.
If the Titans have highly regarded players available to them when they go on the clock at number seven, it will tell us something about Carthon’s roster-building strategy - particularly if they were to go offensive line again after taking Skoronski last year - but with the state of their roster, Tennessee can define their own priorities. Some might point to Simmons and Landry and suggest that precludes taking a defensive lineman, but it never hurts to have another pass rusher, and they could certainly use a contract that generates surplus cap value with Simmons and Landry paid at the top of the market.
The more important question might be where this team thinks they are organizationally, and we’ll have to read that from the tea leaves as we go. With a developing quarterback, it appears it will take a minimum of two more offseasons to get this squad back to fighting shape; whether Tennessee’s decision-makers believe they are on that sort of trajectory is another matter.
Were it me, I would prioritize putting players around Levis. The Titans don’t have a 3rd round pick, so I would look to add a playmaker and a protector with my picks at 7 and 38. There’s a ways to go, but if the plan is to go with Levis, directing resources to tip the odds in his favor seems to make sense.
Early 2024 Projection: 4th in AFC South