Tennessee Titans going to be suitors for Jadeveon Clowney
By Will Lomas
Even going back to last year I thought that Jadeveon Clowney made sense as a potential trade target for the Tennessee Titans.
It isn’t just a matter of finding a good player at a position of need and dreaming up a trade. Instead it was more about the fact that Jadeveon Clowney never had a better season than when Mike Vrabel was calling the plays for the former South Carolina star.
Now that it looks like the Seattle Seahawks are going to let Clowney test the waters in free agency, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Titans were a team that was very motivated to sign the former top pick.
According to ESPN, (specifically Dan Graziano and Jeremy Fowler) rumors are already swirling that the Titans are going to throw their hat in the ring and make a run at Clowney.
"…Clowney could be looking to try to blow the top off the edge rusher market, especially if so many of his fellow free agents are getting franchised, and it’s unlikely Seattle goes to $18 million to $20 million per year for a player who had 3.5 sacks in 2019. The Seahawks value him highly but don’t want to break the bank.Two teams that could give Clowney what he wants and pry him from Seattle: the Colts and Titans."
The big question now is how much will it cost to get Clowney?
Rumor was that Jadeveon Clowney was looking to reset the market and PFF’s projections had him making around $21 million per year. That is a pretty hefty sum, but I think that you have to look at what it would do for the defense as a whole.
Now, you would end up in a situation where Clowney and Harold Landry would both be able to attack tackles in different ways and adjust to matchups accordingly.
An additional bonus is that you could definitely get Clowney bumped inside to DT on pass rush downs so that Landry and Roberson (or D’Andre Walker) could scream off the edges.
One last thing I will say is that if the new CBA passes then the rumor is that the cap will be raised to something like $240 million in 2021. That means that a $21 million deal goes from being 10.5% of your cap in 2020 to 8.8% in 2021.
That my not seem like a lot, but trust me that is a huge difference to the people keeping the books.
So, we don’t know how serious the Titans are in their pursuit of Clowney but if they are going to let Jack Conklin go in either a tag and trade or just let him outright walk in free agency, then they have to do something with that money and they can’t just sit on their hands and get worse.