Albert Breer calls Malcolm Butler a cut candidate for the Tennessee Titans
By Will Lomas
Is this the first Tennessee Titans “rumor” of rumor season?
In this morning’s MMQB, Albert Breer went through every team’s biggest need this offseason and for the Tennessee Titans that was the need for a cornerback.
With Logan Ryan hitting free agency, adding a cornerback seems to make a lot of sense.
In fact, the Titans are only scheduled to have two cornerbacks from their top five last year with LeShaun Sims and Tramaine Brock also scheduled to hit the market.
However, Breer said something that caught me completely off guard when he talked about the need:
"Tennessee could go through a significant overhaul at the position, with Logan Ryan a free agent and Malcolm Butler a cut candidate. That would leave Adoree Jackson as the team’s top player at the position. And with the Titans needing to allocate money for whoever their quarterback is and Derrick Henry, this could be a spot best shored up in the draft."
Cutting Butler would save the Titans $7 million in cap space this year, but it would also leave them with $6 million in dead money. On top of that, Butler was great this season and the drop off that the pass defense faced when he went on IR was massive.
To me, this is an absolute non-starter of a move. Sure, if you want to re-negotiate the deal or give him more guaranteed money in order to lessen his cap hit this year then go ahead because that makes sense.
However, to take a position where you are already going to have to add at least one more player through free agency and the draft, and then make it weaker without some sort of massive cap bump just doesn’t make sense to me.
Breer could have gone with CB, EDGE or OT here (if he thinks Jack Conklin and Dennis Kelly are gone), but the fact that he mentioned Butler as a cut candidate is very strange to me.
I don’t think he is just pulling that out of nowhere, so I am interested to see if we hear any more about this during rumor season. As of right now though, I can’t see any way that they cut the guy who was their CB1 when healthy last year for $7 million in cap and $6 million dead on the books.