Tennessee Titans 2020 draft note: AFC South compensatory picks

A quick note on the 2020 NFL Draft and where everyone in the Tennessee Titans division stands.

We are a long way from the 2020 NFL Draft, but that probably won’t stop me from doing a mock draft or two during the summer months for the Tennessee Titans.

Today though, I thought I should go ahead and talk about where all of the teams in the AFC South stand in terms of draft capital.

With projections coming out about the 2020 compensatory draft selections, we know have a pretty good idea on what the other AFC South team’s assets look like. The reason this is important in May 2019, is that you can trade comp picks once they are announced, but having these projections make it easier to make a move.

For example, if the Jacksonville Jaguars have a 5th round comp pick coming, then they can trade their 5th round pick and it really won’t hurt them.

So, here is how many picks ever team in the AFC South has in 2020.

Tennessee Titans: 6 picks

Pick breakdown: 7 original draft picks, 1 traded away, 0 picks gained, 0 comp picks added.

The Titans will again be one of the teams with the least amount of selections on draft day, but honestly that shouldn’t bother any fan. GM Jon Robinson has done a really good job making all of those picks count, especially the picks in the first five rounds.

After a 2018 draft class that featured more UDFAs (4) than draft picks (3) landing on the opening roster, it is important to remember that for most teams the draft is really only about four rounds long.

This writing was on the wall during free agency where the Titans made some really nice pickups while losing almost nothing. With a big free agency looming, there is a chance that some good compensatory picks will be heading to Nashville in 2021.

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Houston Texans: 10 picks

Pick breakdown: 7 original picks, 0 traded away, 0 picks gained, 3 comp picks added.

The Texans have a huge haul, mostly because they haven’t really done anything in free agency. The refused to try to make their offensive line better, forcing them to have one of the worst draft classes in 2019.

So, while it is a little bit intimidating to see so many draft picks (including 4 in the top-100) the question is, what will the Texans do with it. If they use those picks to have another dud of a draft class, it probably wouldn’t matter if they had 20 draft picks.

There is one interesting aspect about the Texans comp picks that I hadn’t seen, apparently it could benefit them to sit Bradley Roby late in the season if Kareem Jackson is playing a lot for the Denver Broncos. Earlier I linked the compensatory projections I am using, in that article Nick Korte does a great job explaining this. Here is a quote of his from that article:

"While they already have one 3rd rounder on the board for Tyrann Mathieu, they could get a second 3rd rounder for Kareem Jackson. In order for that to happen, Jackson, at $11 million APY, would need to be valued in the 3rd round, while Bradley Roby, at $10 million APY, would need to stay in the 4th round. In this scenario, Roby would instead cancel out the 7th round valued contract of Kendall Lamm. This provides a potential avenue of strategy for the Texans. Should Jackson play a high level of snaps with the Broncos that gets him to the 3rd round level, the Texans could try limiting Roby’s snaps in situations where the outcome of the game is decided, or if Houston is locked into a playoff seed near the end of the regular season."

The reason this should be interesting to Titans fans, is if the Texans are a fringe playoff team in the last three weeks of the season, they may actually bench Bradley Roby in order to get a much better draft pick. Obviously this would be big because the Tennessee Titans play the Houston Texans two out of the final three weeks of the season.

Indianapolis Colts: 8 picks

Pick breakdown: 7 original picks, 0 picks traded away, 1 pick gained, 0 comp picks added.

The Colts made one of the strangest decisions in the draft trading down 20 spots from the 1st round well into the 2nd round to gain just a future 2nd round pick. I hear you saying, “But Will, isn’t more draft picks a good thing?” and obviously yes, but look at the list of names that were drafted between the pick they had and they pick they traded down to:

-Montez Sweat, EDGE

-Johnathan Abram, S

-Jerry Tillery, DT

-DeAndre Baker, CB

-N’keal Harry, WR

-Byron Moore, CB

-Deebo Samuel, WR

-JoeJuan Williams, CB

-Greedy Williams, CB

I think every single one of those players would have started for the Indianapolis Colts this year.

Maybe they get someone in the 2020 2nd round that is as good as one of those player or maybe they use that asset to trade up, but right now people blindly praising the Colts because they were too hard on their draft class in 2018 need to look in a mirror.

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Jacksonville Jaguars: 9 picks

Pick breakdown: 7 original picks, 0 picks traded away, 2 picks gained, 0 comp picks added.

The Jaguars came away from the 2018 draft with two extra picks thanks to the trade for Dante Fowler netting them a 2020 5th rounder and a 6th in a draft day trade with the Seattle Seahawks.

Those late round picks will help them, but their cap situation is what really hurt them this year. They had to cut Tashaun Gipson, Malik Jackson, Jeremy Parnell, and Carlos Hyde for cap reasons.

Jacksonville made those moves to go out and sign Nick Foles to a huge deal, which will ultimately give the Philadelphia Eagles the highest comp pick in 2020.

Unlike most teams, 9 picks probably isn’t enough for the Jaguars. As best as I can tell, they will have $-30 million in cap space next year, which is obviously dead last in the NFL.

They are going to have to cut A.J. Bouye and Calais Campbell just to reduce that to $-10 million or so, which means they will probably make calls around mid season trying to trade some starters for lower picks just to unload that cap space.

When it is all said and done the Jaguars could have 12 or more draft picks just by trying to make ends meet, so this is a really interesting situation to watch.

A quick note on the 2020 NFL Draft and where everyone in the Tennessee Titans division stands.

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