Examining every Titans 2024 roster move (to date)

The latest of my occasional posts about the Tennessee Titans.

“If we’re going in, we’re going in full throttle.”

Instead of writing regularly about the Tennessee Titans, as I did in my regular team-blogging days, I’m writing a handful of posts a year, typically a season preview post (not last year, because I finally got COVID and didn’t just want to annoy people by predicting the Titans would go 6-11 and writing such a post wouldn’t be enjoyable), a draft preview post, and maybe a post if something major happens like they fire a head coach or general manager. Because I’m not writing regularly or trying to cover everything, I prefer to concentrate my more selective writing schedule on writing broader-scale posts rather than trying to cover every detail. Naturally, I’ve decided to break my latest pause by writing a post that addresses every single Titans roster move since the end of the 2023 season. Yes, all 34 of them.

Roster move (part one): Signed DB Shyheim Carter, CB Tay Gowan, WR Tre’Shaun Harrison, TE Thomas Odukoya, OLB Thomas Rush, and OL Lachavious Simmons to Reserve/Futures deals (all Jan. 8).
Roster move (part two): Practice squad contract expired for TE Devin Asiasi, LB Tae Crowder, C James Empey, DE David Moa, S Darius Phillips, G/T Jordan Roos, CB Kendall Sheffield, WR Shi Smith, and S Josh Thompson (all Jan. 15).
Roster move (part three): Non-tendered restricted free agents DL Ross Blacklock, DL Marlon Davidson, G Calvin Throckmorton (all Mar. 13).
Analysis: With the current era of NFL roster rules, there’s no longer quite the same distinction between the 53-man roster of players who are available to play in games on a regular basis and the practice squad that was once 8 players and is now 16, most of whom could be called up to the gameday roster on a selective and weekly basis. Consequently, the practice squad is no longer quite as much a purely developmental squad and group of players who help you get through practice each week over the course of a long season and prep for particular opponents but rather more like a group of 6-12 players who are those practice players and may be called up for specific matchups and a smaller group of the developmental players that may match the theoretical model of the “developmental” aspects of the practice squad. As an outsider, it can be hard to tell just which players fit in which category. The time we really get clarity on this split, between which players the front office and/or coaching staff may see as developmental prospects worth keeping and which are just there to help a team get through the course of the season, is which practice squad players the team chooses to re-sign at the end of their season and which the team chooses to let walk.

The split in terms of which players they chose to re-sign was not too surprising. Asiasi, Crowder, Phillips, and Roos were all on the veteran/exempt exceptions to the “practice squads should be for young players” rule, and players like Moa and Thompson were on the experienced side of things. Of the players they did retain, Harrison was a 2023 UDFA, Odukoya has been an exempt international player, Rush was a 2023 UDFA. Carter, Gowan, and Simmons were all on the older side (2020/21/20 draft classes, respectively), but all are at positions where the Titans were not necessarily deep (as of the end of the season, mind you), and I think it’s important to have those sorts of “you must be at least this good to make the team” benchmark players. And of the players the Titans did not re-sign, none of them were their UDFAs at any point, and none was particularly young. While they don’t officially fall in the same category as the practice squad players the Titans didn’t re-sign, I lump Blacklock, Davidson, and Throckmorton in the same group, players the Titans could have chosen to (attempt to) retain relatively cheaply but were instead not re-signed, not even by the Nick Westbrook-Ikhine non-tender and re-sign route.

The other half of this that particularly applied to the Titans this offseason was they fired the head coach and were turning over all/most of their coaching staff, and that’s often a key time where we learn which players the coaching staff may have valued relative to the front office and which are let walk because of that. When the Titans only retained 6 practice squad players, I thought we might see a new wave of low-end signings after the new head coach was hired, but that did not happen.

Roster move: Re-signed LS Morgan Cox to 1-year deal (reported Mar. 7).
Analysis: Cox was a pending unrestricted free agent, and it’s really useful to have a long-snapper on the roster. This is checking off a necessary box.

Roster move: Signed CB Chidobe Awuzie (ex-Bengals) to 3-year deal (reported Mar. 11, official Mar. 14).
Analysis: You need three corners in the NFL to start, and more as backups and for particular sub packages and as injury replacements. The Titans had one starter in Roger McCreary after Kristian Fulton and Sean Murphy-Bunting hit free agency. Awuzie is an obvious Brian Callahan fit coming from the Bengals and a veteran of the kind you want in a young secondary room. Part of free agency is that free agents are expensive. Them costing “too much” should be your baseline expectation, and the Titans had a bunch of cap space to use in 2024. The real concern is that you don’t Trent Baalke yourself, improving your team in this season but not leaving yourself enough room to fill in additional holes the next offseason. If you do that, your team stagnates and depends on nailing all your (non-low) draft picks and a ton of internal improvement, and you end up the 2023 and 2024 Jaguars, a team that should be in a peak stage of contention but whose immediate future does not look outstandingly bright. But Awuzie’s contract on its own doesn’t cost you that much, and it’s a totally reasonable deal for a player who’s ideally more a 1B-type corner. There’s a bit of age and injury risk here, and the 3-year deal is unsurprisingly “2 years and we’ll see,” but this was a totally fine signing at a position of need.

Roster move: Signed C Lloyd Cushenberry (ex-Broncos) to 4-year deal (reported Mar. 11, official Mar. 14).
Analysis: With the guard market exploding this offseason ($20M/APY for Robert Hunt was only the most dramatic example), getting the top free agent center at $12.5M APY looks like a much better deal. That’s especially true with a young quarterback with enough on his plate without having to worry about protections and when you’re rebuilding the offensive line in general. I wrote about this years ago, but the Floyd Reese era worked exactly like this. The Oilers signed Mark Stepnoski from the Cowboys when they were building a new offensive line, started late-rounders like Kevin Long and Justin Hartwig when the rest of the line was established, and eventually brought in a big-money free agent in Kevin Mawae when they were rebuilding the rest of the line again. Somewhat different eras of the NFL to be sure, but it’s a strategy that works theoretically and we’ve seen work in practice. I’m not going to scout Cushenberry myself, but unless they missed on the evaluation of the player, something I’m less worried about than in the past because of the presence of Bill Callahan, this looks like a smart signing.

Roster move: Signed LB Kenneth Murray (ex-Chargers) to 3-year deal (reported Mar. 11, official Mar. 14).
Analysis: On the one hand, the Titans had a clear need at (inside) linebacker after failing to re-sign Azeez Al-Shaair and spending 2023 with only one real linebacker on the roster. On the other hand, have you seen Murray play? Actually watched him try to cover in space and play with recognition? To put him in the context of past Titans linebackers, he’s somewhere in the range of Colin McCarthy and Rashaan Evans but with better timed speed. He goes downhill and hopefully hits what he’s aiming at, and the less you ask him to do of other things, the better he is.

Part of Murray’s appeal depends on how you want your defense to play. My base perspective is that Jim Schwartz is fundamentally correct, that the best way to play defense is to rush with four specialized pass rushers and cover with seven specialized coverage players, and to just do that most of the time. You can mix up your coverages within that scheme, to the extent your players permit that, but that you should min-max your roster-building to achieve that end. New defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson comes from Baltimore, where that hasn’t been the dominant mode of defense (I don’t want to overstate this point-John Harbaugh was a special teams coach rather than a DC and they’ve run through a raft of different DCs over the years rather than a KC-style Andy Reid-Steve Spagnuolo pairing). I’m trying not to let my personal bias affect my evaluation here too much, but Murray is a player with defined weaknesses and strengths that I haven’t always seen show up even when they should in my (non-studied) watching of the Chargers. There’s hopefully more of an idea behind the signing and the Titans hopefully know all of my concerns and decided to sign Murray anyway, but of course that’s not always the case.

Roster move: Signed RB Tony Pollard (ex-Cowboys) to 3-year deal (reported Mar. 11, official Mar. 14).
Analysis: ICYMI, former running back Ran Carthon likes having running backs. I thought the Titans might go cheap after spending a third-round pick on Tyjae Spears last offseason and pair him with more of grinder back, where Hassan Haskins and maybe Julius Chestnut are already-on-the-roster options. Brian Callahan has indicated recently he still wants this sort of back, which is probably why the Titans are having pre-draft visits with backs in that mold. The obvious appeal of Pollard is that, like Spears, he has some ability both as a runner and as a pass-catcher, so his presence on the field does not tip the defense toward either defending the run or defending the pass. There are a couple risks here. One is that Pollard struggled some on the field in 2023. This was likely due to his 2022 fractured fibula and high-ankle sprain, and you can find stats showing he was a more effective player the second half of the season. If possible improvement was a small sample-size fluke, there’s a chance this signing immediately looks like a stupid mistake. The second point is whether Spears or Pollard turns into a premium pass protector-for most of Pollard’s Cowboys career, Zeke Elliott was that player and he’s awesome at that, and the Pollard snaps were a noticeable downgrade. That Joe Mixon, despite being a useful runner and pass-catcher, was not that player held the Bengals’ offense back somewhat, and forced them to be more predictable. We’ll see if Pollard and/or Spears becomes that player, or if the Titans end up settling on precisely one of those players or even using a third player in that role. So, this could end up looking anything from great to awful; if the Titans did their due diligence, it would hopefully rule out the worst cases.

Roster move: Signed G Saahdiq Charles (ex-Commanders) to 2-year deal (reported Mar. 12, official Mar. 15).
Analysis: Charles was an LSU teammate of Cushenberry, and he’s a player I would have had a much stronger take on when I followed the entire NFL much more attentively cough a decade ago. We finally got some clarity on exactly what he is from Nick Holz last week, that he showed flashes of being a terrific power player in Washington, and if he does that consistently he’s a starting guard in the NFL. IN that case, scratch any initial idea he’d be a candidate for the swing tackle spot and maybe a third body at right tackle for the competition between Jaelyn Duncan and Nicholas Petit-Frere, and file him as a developmental project for Bill Callahan and competition for Daniel Brunskill at right guard. And, uh, they’re doing something at left tackle before the season starts, right? Hopefully Ran Carthon learned the lesson from last offseason that you need more than five offensive linemen to make up an offensive line room (see also the 2022 Bengals, who did a great job of improving their starting five but only their starting five and ended up with a massive problem in the postseason when they had a couple offensive linemen get hurt). If this ends up a move with a major downside on the field, it will be because at least one other thing went badly wrong.

Roster move: Re-signed K Nick Folk to 1-year deal (reported Mar. 13, official Mar. 20).
Analysis: See also Morgan Cox above, checking a necessary box to check. One thing I noted on Twitter: Folk was a better kickoff man than I thought he might be last year, but the NFL’s Hybrid Kickoff adaptation of the XFL’s Low Impact Kickoff places a higher value on placement and accuracy than on “kick the ball really far,” and that should benefit a veteran like Folk who doesn’t have the strongest leg.

Roster move: Tendered ERFA Jack Gibbens, who re-signed (tender official Mar. 13, re-signing official Mar. 14).
Analysis: Sometimes the restricted free agent and exclusive-rights free agents market is interesting, or at least produces a more interesting result like the aforementioned NWI non-tendering and re-signing. But sometimes there’s only one and it’s a re-signing. The new kickoff rule might have an interesting impact on roster construction, and a relatively slower player like Gibbens might be more valuable in a scheme where “run down the field 40 yards” is less important. Or maybe he gets cut at/before the cut to 53, and that would be fine.

Roster move: Signed WR Calvin Ridley (ex-Jaguars) to 4-year deal (reported Mar. 13, official Mar. 15).
Analysis: The big move of free agency. As I said before, the money is the money. Yes, the contract is an “overpay.” Ridley is in the abstract not one of the ten best receivers in the NFL, or necessarily even one of the ten best receviers in the NFL on a veteran contract. But the Titans had plenty of cap space, so that doesn’t matter unless it constrains their future actions. And Ridley is a vastly better separator than any receiver the Titans had on their roster. He’s not a perfect player by any means, with a persistent problem of having a few more concentration-style drops than you’d prefer.

As Josh Norris and the fine folks at Underdog Fantasy pointed out, he was a more consistent producer for the Jaguars in 2023 when they had Zay Jones in the lineup as a pure outside receiver. Simple demonstration: looking only at the passes Trevor Lawrence attempted, without Zay in the lineup, Ridley had 9 first downs on 39 non-penalty targets. Same split but with Zay, 35/84. That’s 23% vs. 42%. I don’t have full route data for with and without Zay splits, but in the games I do have (which is still most of them), Ridley ran Go and Hitch routes on 46% of his targets with Zay in the lineup vs. 62% without Zay in the lineup. A good chunk of that difference was made up of in-breaking routes like slant, cross, and post. The Titans aren’t going to be running the same offense Doug Pederson and Press Taylor ran in Jacksonville, but that does suggest keeping Ridley outside as a Mike Williams-style pure outside the numbers receiver would not be the best use of his talents.

I don’t have people telling me things, so I can’t comment on Paul Kuharsky’s reports that some people have concerns about how Ridley will react to getting paid a chunk of change. I’ll also note that receivers recently have tended to see their production fall off in their early 30s. Like most free agency contracts, this is very much in the “two years and we’ll see” range, and there’s also the chance that Ridley’s decline in Matt Harmon’s charting for Reception Perception and his worse Open Score in ESPN’s receiver tracking metrics means this looks like a bad decision by year two. But as a baseball exec mentioned, if you don’refuse to overpay for anybody, you finish third in the race to obtain any significant free agent. This signing is a gamble, but (a) the Titans had the cap space, (b) Ridley is good at something that’s important that the Titans didn’t have anybody who was good at, (c) he’s a clear upgrade on what they had or what their obvious next best available option was, and (d) one of the ways to get a QB evaluation wrong is to lie to yourself that he’s failing because of his teammates, and this helps obviate that excuse. That it hurts the division rival Jaguars is a nice bonus, but that should be regarded as a nice bonus rather than something that helps actually justify the signing. The bottom line to me is that as far as gambles go, this one looks to me like one worth making.

Roster move: Signed QB Mason Rudolph (ex-Steelers) to 1-year deal (reported Mar. 13, official Mar. 15).
Analysis: The Titans were not going to go into the season with Malik Willis as the only option at backup quarterback behind Will Levis. The backup QB market got pretty picked over pretty quickly, but Rudolph checks the most important boxes for a backup quarterback in today’s NFL: (a) the head coach won’t be asked any questions about him at press conferences, (b) he didn’t completely annoy his previous NFL coaches, and (c) he didn’t faceplant or otherwise look completely overwhelmed when asked to play in a regular season game. In an alternate world, the Titans look at backup quarterback as a priority and go after one of the higher-end options. But Rudolph should be fine for what he’s expected to be.

Roster move: Re-signed WR Nick Westbrook-Ikhine to 1-year deal (reported Mar. 14, official Mar. 15).
Analysis: If Nick Westbrook-Ikhine ends up playing 611 snaps on offense despite missing three games, as was the case in 2023, at least one thing will probably have gone badly wrong in 2024. I trust that Ran Carthon and Brian Callahan know that, and in that context this is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

Roster move: Released OT Andre Dillard (reported/official Mar. 15).
Analysis: This was an obvious failure waiting to happen from the day the deal was announced, and it took until the end of September for everybody to recognize it was an obvious failure that had indeed happened. The only partial surprise was the release didn’t happen earlier. I know part of my thing is I love to rehash old decisions, but I don’t have any non-obvious points to make about this one.

Roster move: Signed Sebastian Joseph-Day (ex-49ers) to 1-year deal (reported Mar. 19, official Mar. 20).
Analysis: The Titans saw eight different defensive linemen play at least 100 snaps in 2023. Of those eight, six were available to other teams at some point during the 2023 season, either as a street free agent, on the Titans practice squad, or on waivers. One of the other two was a free agent who saw his contract expire at the end of the 2023 regular season and signed away with a division rival (farewell and thanks for what you brought to the team, Denico Autry). I don’t want to suggest the Titans’ defensive line depth chart is Jeffery Simmons and the seven dwarfs, because 2023 was the third consecutive season the Titans churned through a bunch of defensive linemen, and they’d gotten decent results before with some of the guys they brought in. But it stood out to me before last season as a position that needed additional depth and competition, and Joseph-Day is the sort of NFL veteran who’s been in the league before and provides as least a baseline level of play. The Titans still need more at the position in my view, but this was a completely reasonable signing that provides needed depth.

Roster moves: Acquired L’Jarius Sneed + 2024 seventh-round pick (#252 overall) for 2024 seventh-round pick (#221 overal) and 2025 third-round pick (reported Mar. 22, official Apr. 1), and signed him to a four-year contract.
Analysis: Oh boy, now this was the move that I thought the Ridley signing has precluded, that looked quite possible earlier in the window but seemed less likely once the Titans had made the financial commitments they’d made to other players. I mentioned this on Twitter that I had what felt like a weird reaction to this trade: it makes the Titans better in 2024 but I’m pretty sure it’s a mistake anyawy. This is a longer format, so let’s unpack that a little.

I mentioned this in the Awuzie writeup, but the Titans entered this offseason in need of two starter-level corners and could also use improved depth at the position. Awuzie qualifies was one of those starter-level types, but they still had a need. And with multiple remaining needs and only two picks in the top 100 picks of the NFL draft where you more reasonably hope to find immediate major contributors, they could still justify a major investment at an important position like corner. The Titans are unquestionably a better team on the field in 2024 with Sneed compared to a 2025 3rd-round pick, and if your analysis ends there, you give the Titans an A and the Chiefs an F. And if your analysis ends there, your grades aren’t worth a tinker’s damn to me.

I don’t want to turn this into an extended philosophical discussion of the meta about trading players, and let’s exclude the seventh-round pick swap from this discussion. For purposes of this discussion, I’ll also exclude the status of Sneed’s knee, and whether that’s a “degenerative” condition that will make any long-term contract for him a major risk (throwback note: the Titans gave Tony Brown a three-year extension, thinking he likely had two years left as a productive player, and he lasted six games before getting hurt). Those aside, the Titans gave up a 2025 3rd-round pick for the right to pay Sneed a “market”-value extension. Draft picks are never a guarantee, at any point in the draft, but 3rd-rounders are relatively valuable. Put it in concrete terms-would you trade Tyjae Spears for L’Jarius Sneed, knowing you don’t get Sneed cheaply? If that 3rd-round pick is Monty Rice or Jeremiah Poutasi, sure. If that 3rd-round pick is Kevin Byard or Jonnu Smith or Nate Davis, getting those players cheap for four years, not so much. To justify that future value, Sneed has to be not just an excellent starting corner of the sort you’d have to get for $76 million over four years, but to have more of a transformative effect for the defense.

An important reason I think this trade is likely to be a particular mistake for the Titans is that acquiring Sneed makes them better in 2024 but trading a third-round pick in 2025 makes them on average worse in 2027 and 2028, is that timeline doesn’t matchup with what I think the Titans should be valuing. It’s extremely unlikely the Titans are going to compete for anything interesting worth winning in 2024-the scenario where they are competitors in a loaded AFC is somewhere in the realm of “Brian Callahan may be a better offensive designer and playcaller than Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan” and/or “Will Levis is one of the top half-dozen quarterbacks in the NFL, and we’re sorry we pumped up C.J. Stroud last year because Levis is probably better.” As a Titans fan, I’d love for either/both of those to be true, but I wouldn’t bet on either happening at any odds anybody would give me.

The Titans are not good enough around Levis to be a competitor even if he’s an average starter (which is why I wrote before last draft the Titans should take a QB in the first round (impliedly because he’s a probable future top-eight QB) or not at all). It’s possible that Sneed helps improve the defense so much that it’s a success if their goal is to try to win 10 games and compete for the playoffs in 2024. But if that and not winning the Super Bowl is their goal, the Titans spent the past three months us they were trying to win a Super Bowl instead. I don’t mean to dismiss making the playoffs as a goal for a team-when your team hasn’t been made the playoffs in a long time, like the Titans missed from 2009 through 2016, simply entering the postseason tournament counts as a big success. But when you’ve had a bit of a run recently and failed to get over the hump, and when ownership is telling you that winning the Super Bowl is the goal, doubling down on trying to make the playoffs the next year by sacrificing future assets looks like a dumb move.

Going further on that, if Levis isn’t the answer at quarterback, the Titans are spending additional draft assets on a quarterback, and that third-round pick would either be fodder for a trade up for the next future signal-caller or to help build a team around him like the Colts spending a 3rd-round pick on T.Y. Hilton to help Andrew Luck. If Levis is the answer at quarterback, the Titans will start paying him a bunch of money and will need premium draft picks in the top 100 to help build a quality team around the now expensive QB, and the third round pick will be really valuable. I don’t want to say the Titans have to win a Super Bowl in the next three seasons for me to view this trade as a correct thing to do (now), but nor can I convince myself that’s the wrong way to view this trade.

Roster move: Acquired OT Leroy Watson from the Cleveland Browns for a 2024 seventh-round pick (#227 overall) (Apr. 12).
Analysis: A project tackle for offensive line coach Bill Callahan to continue to work on. Watson has barely played any snaps in the NFL, and the Browns by accepting this sort of draft pick compensation clearly weren’t planning on him to be a major part of their present or future. One of the implications of this trade might be to scratch “developmental tackle” off the priority list for the Titans’ remaining seventh-round selections. I’m not going to watch Watson, but throw him in the “maybe RT competition, more likely possible swing tackle” candidate. But remember the baseline for seventh-round picks is no guarantee to make the roster, and judge him accordingly.

How to Think About This

Okay, so how should we think about these moves?

Basic Version

The most basic way to think about how an NFL team should handle the offseason is that when they lose a contributing player at a position, they need to replace that player. Looking at the offseason that way, and using my old threshold of “contributor = 300+ snaps” for losses and a subjective rating of the acquisitions, here’s the rundown:

QB: Ryan Tannehill out, Mason Rudolph in
RB: Derrick Henry out, Tony Pollard in
WR: Chris Moore out, Calvin Ridley in
TE: Trevon Wesco out
OL: Aaron Brewer + Andre Dillard + Chris Hubbard out, Saahdiq Charles + Lloyd Cushenberry in
DL: Denico Autry + Kyle Peko out, Sebastian Joseph-Day in
OLB: (none)
LB: Azeez Al-Shaair out, Kenneth Murray in
CB: Kristian Fulton + Sean Murphy-Bunting out, Chidobe Awuzie + L’Jarius Sneed in
SAF: Kevin Byard + K’Von Wallace out

From this perspective, the Titans have done a good job of replacing what they lost on the whole, but still have some work to do. They need another tight end (or more than one, as Brian Callahan emphasized at his OTA press conference), that obvious left tackle need, another player for the front four in pass rush situations to replace Autry, and a starting safety. With three picks in the top 100, they can hit those three significant needs, and add another tight end on day three of the draft and/or in post-draft free agency where players like Wesco can still be found.

Different Version

Yes, it’s necessary to fill out a roster of contributors, but I’m reminded of the quote allegedly given by Napoleon or Frederick the Great, that an army dispersed around the frontier looks like it’s designed to prevent smuggling rather than to win a conflict.

A couple obvious points: the 300-snap threshold, which I’ve used to provide a consistent baseline, is incomplete and not always a helpful guide. The Titans once again went through a rotating cast of defensive tackles, and Jaleel Johnson at 270 snaps doesn’t quality. If you look at aggregate snaps lost, the continuing need there becomes more apparent. This is also a poor guide to positions where the team was not very good and could use improvement. Linebacker does not appear on the above list, but almost everyone would agree the Titans could use another starter-type in addition to Murray because the players they have on the roster (returner Jack Gibbens is the one who met the threshold based on 2023 snaps, and nobody else made it to 100) were not at that level in 2023. The in vs. out method also does not fact at all player quality. The swap of Calvin Ridley for Moore should be an upgrade. Kenneth Murray in for Al-Shaair looks like a downgrade. Both are mere 1-for-1 swaps by that method.

Another point: not all positions are equally valuable. There should be positions you value more and positions you value less, and there would ideally be an integrated idea of how to play as a team. That was one of the criticisms leveled at the Titans in Mike Sando’s piece at The Athletic, paying a receiver, two corners, a running back, and a linebacker. Watching Brian Callahan’s Bengals offense and listening to him talk about receivers and how they spent on two corners might make you think winning the perimeter was a big strength. Investing heavily in middle of the field players on both sides of the ball, at positions where some teams may try to get by cheaper, cuts against the implied philosophy the other moves might suggest.

That’s the difficulty I have-they’ve added a bunch of (mostly) good players to fill a bunch of needs, but how far does it go to improving the team in the long run, and what’s the goal of this team? My old Football Outsiders colleague Mike Tanier was dismissive of what they did in his new Substack, dismissing the Titans to their normal home of “nobody’s going to pay attention to them.” My personal attitude to that is (a) fine, whatever and (b) I don’t care. More specifically, Tanier took on the big picture: “Building around Levis makes as much sense as the Falcons building around Desmond Ridder or the Commanders around Sam Howell in 2023: it’s wishful thinking disguised as cautious player development.” As I wrote above, I agree, the Titans should not have taken Levis last year. But what are their options this year? It’s a QB-heavy draft at the top, but even at 7th overall, it would be very difficult for the Titans to get one of the top couple passers. Nothing Levis did last year changed anybody’s mind on who he is and what he’s likely to be, but nor is spending the 7th pick on Bo Nix or Michael Penix or maybe getting the fourth quarterback by outspending the Giants or the Vikings or the Broncos or the Raiders for the fourth-best QB in the draft a good bet on success. Given that they already picked Levis, they’re doing something right.

And that’s where we are with the Titans, evaluating Levis. What they did on offense, pending a starting left tackle to come with that seventh overall pick (or something close to it), is give them the environment they need to not lie to themselves about how close they are at QB. Callahan is new, and he’s not tied to Levis. An apparently empowered Carthon and the people around him could survive a second-round quarterback not succeeding (probably, as long as they’re being clear with ownership about where they are and might end up). This is the goal for 2024, and it’s a goal that makes sense for a team that entered the offseason needing an awful lot and still has a few significant needs. Now about that Sneed trade, though…