Tennessee Titans 53-man roster projection: July 2

Running back: 4 (total 6)

Sure things: Derrick Henry, Dion Lewis

Numbers favor: David Fluellen (can contribute on special teams), Alex Barnes

First and foremost, this offense will go as far as Marcus Mariota goes. However, there is a strong argument to be made that the next most important offensive player on the roster is Derrick Henry.

If he can be even 80% as effective as he was in December for a full season, all of the sudden you are talking about the Titans having a home run hitter like they haven’t had since Chris Johnson. Oh and did I mention that he is also a near sure thing in the red zone too?

Behind him the Tennessee Titans have to be hoping for more out of Dion Lewis in year two. Give him a mulligan for last year when everything went wrong AND the offensive line forgot how to bully people for a little bit.

Let’s say that he doesn’t get the volume that he did in 2018, but he produces as much as he did last year. So basically he is just more efficient and cuts out all that bad reversing field nonsense.

Then it gets interesting. I think David Fluellen makes it because he has completely changed his body type and looks more like a fullback in camp. A big part of that would be because…well the Titans are lining him up at fullback.

I wrote earlier how the Titans needed to get more creative at fullback and stop using a pure blocker because that doesn’t do anything to help offenses in 2019. Instead, they need someone who can do something with the ball in his hands and who can distract defenses as a threat in the passing game.

Finally, Alex Barnes is a name that no one really seems to know. He hasn’t made a big splash in camp, but a lot of that is due to the limited contact in OTAs and the fact that everything gets whistled dead so quick.

When the pads come on, Barnes has the athleticism and the college production to suggest that he would thrive at the next level and he will get a chance to prove that.

One of the sneaky needs for the Tennessee Titans in 2020 is a running back because Henry is a free agent and Dion Lewis is too expensive to keep unless he has a dramatic uptick in performance. If the Titans can get Barnes on that cheap UDFA deal for the next three years it would go a long way towards helping them reduce that 2020 cap number.