Pros, cons and hard truths about a potential Jalen Ramsey trade for Tennessee Titans

What would Jalen Ramsey do for the Tennessee Titans?

With MMCNB in tact, what exactly would Ramsey do for the Titans? As a cornerback he would take the job of either Malcolm Butler or Logan Ryan based on the starters in the non-nickel package.

Right now they are playing at such a high level, do you really want to mess with that success?

I truly don’t know, but I can tell you that the Titans DBs love Ramsey and we have seen that in offseason posts and videos of guys like Kevin Byard and Kenny Vaccaro working out with him.

Let’s suspend reality and pretend the Titans have already traded for Ramsey. The way that I think that has to go is that now you are just a team that is going to play a base nickel front. So far that is exactly what they have been playing, with Adoree Jackson playing 86% of the snaps.

So that part isn’t necessarily a stretch, but it is a decision you have to make to justify this move.

Now the defense is a base 4-2-5, and the odd man out would be Adoree Jackson as crazy as that would have sounded last year.

As for Ramsey’s specific role, I think that he would be a true shadow cornerback. When you look at him vs other starters over his career, he has never been outside of the top-17 in passer rating allowed in his three years in the NFL. More impressively he has been in the top-11 twice out of those three years.

So Ramsey is your CB1, Malcolm Butler is the CB2 on the boundary and Logan Ryan is your slot CB.

To let you know how much that can dictate a matchup, last week at home against Jalen Ramsey Nuk Hopkins he had just 4 receptions on 7 targets for 27 yards. Only 2 of those yards came after the catch.

Compare that to Week 1 where Hopkins had 8 catches on 13 targets for 111 yards and 2 TDs. 29 of those yards came after the catch.

So if you can do that to a team’s best receiver AND have other DBs that can take the rest of the weapons away, now you can start covering with five guys in man to man and start sending blitzes as often as you like.

Just as a general rule, those three DBs can lock down any three WRs in the NFL and if you match up Jayon Brown vs the tight end, use Kevin Byard as the Cover-1 safety, then you can choose up to six other rushers to send at the QB without really giving up any good matchups in coverage.

That sort of defense would be terrifying and you start to think that 14+ points wins you 90% of your games.