Tennessee Titans not repeating Nashville Predators trade miscue

Did the Tennessee Titans look to the NHL when making decisions at the trade deadline.

It is time we had another talk about Tennessee Titans GM Jon Robinson.

Let’s start by saying this, I believe that Jon Robinson is one of the 10 best GMs in the NFL and even then I think I am selling him short. There are a lot of people who are giving Robinson flak right now because he didn’t address WR at the trade deadline yesterday.

I completely understand and there were a lot of big names I wanted them to land too. Guys like Golden Tate, Demaryius Thomas or Amari Cooper were all players that stood out to me as great fits for the Titans as trade targets.

Those three players went for a 1st, a 3rd and a 4th. On top of that, they are going to be $10+ million per year players if they even choose to stay with those teams in 2019. There is a good chance that one or all of these teams are either paying for an 8 game rental or about to spend a premium to keep players they could have gotten on the open market.

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It is nice to imagine that a team can come into the season and predict where they will have injuries but if you knock out the top two receiving threats on any team in the NFL they struggle. Look no further than New England who struggled badly with a banged up Gronk and with Edelman out.

You can’t have perfect depth everywhere and the perfect storm of losing those players, learning a new scheme and Marcus Mariota having a freak accident where he lost feeling in his hand for two months, put the Titans in a terrible position.

But, next year, the Titans will have Delanie Walker back and the players will have full understanding of this offense. On top of that, they will have all but a 6th round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.

Don’t get me wrong, draft picks aren’t everything. Robinson was trying to make moves, but he just didn’t want to bid a 2nd or 3rd round pick do grab a rental player. If history has shown us anything, it is that Jon Robinson doesn’t sit on his hands. In fact look at these tweets:

People now acting like JRob has spent his GMing life sitting on his hands need to stop talking. He traded up THREE times in the draft and now off one trade deadline he’s dead to you for not being aggressive? Please.
— Paul Kuharsky (@PaulKuharskyNFL) October 31, 2018

As I just discussed on @Midday180, the #Titans talked to at least seven teams Tuesday about deals. Found low availability and high prices.
— Paul Kuharsky (@PaulKuharskyNFL) October 31, 2018

So really quickly these are the teams I bet they talked to and who they were potentially targeting:

Denver: DT or Shane Ray

Detroit: Golden Tate or Ziggy

New York Giants: Sterling Sheppard

Oakland Raiders: Jared Cook maybe?

Tampa Bay: D-Jax, Humphries or Brate

Green Bay: Randall Cobb

San Francisco: Pierre Garcon

Anyway, the point is Jon Robinson was making calls but other teams were asking too much. The Titans didn’t want to give up a big pick in a really good draft for a bridge player.

This is a lesson that I bet Jon Robinson learned from being around Nashville Predators GM David Poile.

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If you don’t watch NHL (you definitely should it is great) then you may not know much about this and frankly I am no expert. However, this story is easy and transcends the individual sport.

So, the Predators are really good. Two years ago they went to the Stanley Cup finals, last year they won more games than any other team in the regular season, and this year they are the best team in the NHL right now at the top of the standings.

Nashville is a model franchise right now with a great defense, two really solid goalies and a team of primarily young players locked up on good contracts with a potentially game changing player on their minor league team.

The Predators were poised for a deep playoff run last year, but the issue was that the depth scoring just wasn’t there. Their solution was to make a trade.

Now on paper, this was going to be perfect. There were some really solid names out there (most of them I can’t spell) that would have given the Predators a boost and probably pushed them into the playoffs.

Poile was asked in nearly every interview for a month if he was going to make a trade leading up to the deadline. It seemed like the team was certainly going to make a move even when Poile was hesitant and thought that maybe it wouldn’t be the best idea given that they had already traded for Kyle Turris earlier in the season (gave up a 2nd round pick).

When the trade deadline, players were being moved like crazy and there were rumors that the Preds were involved with all of them. And then it happened. The Preds traded their 1st round pick (and then some) for…Ryan Hartman.

For most of you that won’t mean anything, but the NFL equivalent would have been the Titans trading a 2nd round pick for Pierre Garcon. The price was way above fair value, but because there was so much outside pressure for a move to be made Poile pulled the trigger and overpaid for a good, not great player.

Fast forward and the Preds are out of the playoffs earlier than expected and now all eyes shift to a draft that has great prospects available where Nashville is picking. However, because of the moves that were made during the season, the Predators don’t get a chance to land one of those home run picks.

Now they are faced with the same problem, and while the Predators are very good a lot of things need to go right if they are going to win the Stanley Cup this year.

The point of this story is simple despite it being a little long:

-David Poile might have allowed outside pressure to push him to overpay for a player who was good, but not great and didn’t push them over the edge for a championship (yet).

-Jon Robinson got involved in trade talks with seven teams, but ultimately decided that the value wasn’t worth what they were getting back.

We can’t tell the future, but I know that Poile probably wishes he had that pick back even though Hartman has been solid. Maybe there was a perfect trade Robinson could have made for the Titans, but overpaying for a player is never the right answer unless he can push you to a championship.

This isn’t about trusting Jon Robinson even though you should. This is about a false narrative going around that Robinson sat on his hands, when really he was active and making phone calls. The difference is, instead of fans groaning that he spent to much on a player (like what happened with the Predators), they are groaning because he didn’t make a move.

There was no right answer given the options he had on Tuesday and despite three years of building good faith fans are still mad, likely because the team is losing so many close games.

Ultimately, no matter what happened at the trade deadline there were going to be naysayers. Robinson stuck to his guns and didn’t overpay despite being in talks, now we just have to wait and see.

This is a question that will be answered 18 months from now, not this week. Football is a knee jerk sport and the first time any of these WRs have a 100 yard game Titans fans will get in an uproar, but this was a non-move with the future in mind. Only time will tell who was right.

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