Everything we know about the Tennessee Titans and Jadeveon Clowney

No one knows for sure, but let’s try to figure out what is going on with Jadeveon Clowney and the Tennessee Titans.

The biggest jewel left on the free agent market is Jadeveon Clowney, and it is presumed that the Tennessee Titans are interested in adding the former Seattle Seahawks and Houston Texans Pro Bowl EDGE.

I will get more into the cap situation on the next two slides of this when I talk about the moves the team has made this offseason. First though, I wanted to start off by saying that Jadeveon Clowney has never been a player that I have stood on the table for.

If you have followed me at all, you would know that I generally see the worst in most of the players in the AFC South because I frequently try to view them through the lens of what they can’t do so that I can imagine how the Tennessee Titans can beat them.

So, when you do that you notice things like Jalen Ramsey‘s lack of effort vs the run, Jacoby Brissett‘s timidness and pretty much everything Myles Jack has ever done because he isn’t good.

It is important that I say that because for his entire career with the Houston Texans, the only thing I really picked apart with Jadeveon Clowney was his inability to become a top-end pass rusher despite most in the media basically calling him the second coming of Michael Strahan.

While he still doesn’t have that, I think people are wrong to suggest that Clowney isn’t a very good end who is stout vs the run game and above average rushing the QB.

With that said, let’s get into the path that led us to today.

Vic Beasley signed

With Jack Conklin being allowed to leave in free agency, it felt like the Tennessee Titans couldn’t just sit on the money that they had.

Up to to that point, the Titans had cut Cameron Wake, Delanie Walker, Dion Lewis, and Ryan Succop as well, which all boded well for some moves to be made on the open market.

Everyone thought, “Sure, they re-signed Ryan Tannehill, Derrick Henry, Dennis Kelly, Chris Milton, and Anthony Firkser, but they are going to hit us with a splash move any time now.”

However, free agents slowly started to get signed across the league with little to no mention of the Titans being involved. Guys like D.J. Reader, who had talent and connections to this coaching staff were being signed and it looked like the Titans were content on sitting back and picking their spots.

All of the sudden, news comes out that the Tennessee Titans had signed Vic Beasley.

This was incredibly strange since it isn’t the Titans strategy to add boom or bust players like this, instead preferring to spend their money on free agents with a high floor: Rodger Saffold, Adam Humphries, Cameron Wake, Kenny Vaccaro, etc.

Ultimately the news came out that it was a one year deal and not a 4 year/$50 million type deal like everyone was afraid of, which flips the move from a C- to a B+.

Still though, the Titans don’t have a lot of money to spend in free agency and this looked to be a move made out of defeat on missing out on a prospect like Clowney.

While they fill two different roles, how much money were we expecting Tennessee to give to the EDGE position in free agency this year with three cheap depth players in Reggie Gilbert, Derick Roberson and D’Andre Walker, and a very talented starter in Harold Landry?

That was until…

Jurrell Casey traded

We all know the way the NFL works and often it has to be a cold business full of calculated moves. Moves like this that separate emotion from reality and sacrifice, and may result in you being wrong a day from now in, exchange for being right a year from now are what make good teams great.

I don’t think it is any sort of secret that I was lower on Jurrell Casey than the consensus and I stand by the fact that I think next year the two starters should have been DaQuan Jones and Jeffery Simmons if we wanted to reward players who did the most with their snaps in 2019.

However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the emotional side of it and how upset most people are that the Titans only got a 7th round pick for Casey.

Casey is due $36 million over the next three years and I absolutely hope he earns every penny of it and gets a new deal after that. However, history does show that once you start creeping into the 30s that defensive linemen start to fade and we saw some of that this year with Casey.

In 2019 he missed two games, tied his lowest sack total since 2012 and had the fewest TFLs in his career.

I don’t want him to fail or anything close to that, but if you look at it like that and you realize how much money you save for making a move like that, you can see why it was done.

Immediately after this news broke, Titans fans all started frantically looking for available free agents that would demand a huge salary and one name kept coming up: Jadeveon Clowney.

Down to “three” teams

Now we are almost all the way caught up to date, and multiple rumors pointed to the Tennessee Titans, New York Jets and Seattle Seahawks as the teams most interested in signing Clowney.

As the field narrowed, rumors came in that maybe the Indianapolis Colts were a potential dark horse but as far as we can tell it looks like all the rumors and innuendo suggest that it was down to the three teams I mentioned to start this.

Enter “Shane” the Seattle Seahawks fan who says he has an inside source in all of this.

This is where things get wild because despite having just 527 followers at the time of writing this, one of those followers just so happens to be the Ian Rapoport. If that name sets off alarms in your head, that is because he is the constantly breaking Tennessee Titans news and spot on with his inside info.

In fact, he is even more connected than the people in Nashville that used to get all the scoops on the Titans in the past before Jon Robinson came to town and plugged those leaks.

Late Saturday night he said that he had heard that the Colts weren’t involved and that that Seahawks were OUT. He also said that the Tennessee Titans were thought to be the front runner with another mystery team (that didn’t make the playoffs last year) behind them.

That is where everything ended up on Saturday night, and now we have one final update.

Today’s rumors

Right now there are two rumors that we have seen, first from Titans Film Room (who is a must follow):

That would make a lot of sense. The Titans are an incredibly tight lipped organization and have been for years since Jon Robinson took over. Magnify that by adding in Mike Vrabel who would rather eat glass than tell reporters whether a player was injured or not, and you have to assume that leaks aren’t coming from Tennessee.

If these things are all true, then the timeline would suggest that last night was the night that Clowney and his representation wanted to figure out where he was going to go in free agency.

That is when the Seattle Seahawks pulled out because they didn’t want to outbid for him, and it was down to the Titans and a mystery team.

The Titans were presumed to be the front runners from the beginning in this scenario and for one reason or another the mystery team behind them (likely the Jets) couldn’t blow him away with an offer.

This morning Clowney and his representation likely started making plans to get to Nashville so that Tennessee’s doctors could take a look and him and give him a clean bill of health.

That would jive with the second rumor that I mentioned earlier:

Even if all of this is true, it doesn’t mean that this is a done deal. With the price for Clowney now known, other teams could try to make a last, last minute push for the former first overall pick.

With all sides pretty quiet right now, rumors are all anyone has to go on in the saga to sign the last high value free agent on the market.

When you put all the rumors together, it all does make sense but it is far from concrete. Still, if you want to know what the prevailing theory is for most of the people trying to connect dots, this is the best guess for what is holding up a potential Jadeveon Clowney deal and which team is most likely to land his services.

March 24th update

Monday has come and gone and no one in the national media has said anything about Clowney directly. However, two pieces of information have come out that are interesting and they are likely to change who he will sign with and when he will sign.

Let’s start with the when of it all.

Apparently, the President of the NFL Physicians Society is suspending physicals for free agents as well as NFL Combine re-checks:

That means that even if teams have a deal in place with Clowney, nothing is written in stone until he actually takes his physical and signs on the dotted line. That makes things a lot more hazy and confusing.

Secondly, you may remember “Shane” from one of the previous slides. The man who is seemingly connected to Clowney and who is followed by Ian Rapoport, had an update on the former Seahawks EDGE today:

Based off all the details on his timeline, it looks like the prevailing theory now is that the Titans offered him something more than $18.5 million per year, which is the offer the Seahawks are leaving on the table.

However, they are being outbid by the Indianapolis Colts so let’s just assume the number is north of $20 million per year.

So that is what we “know” now, or at least it is the best we can piece together using the best rumor sources we have.

To recap quickly:

-Clowney might not sign until the pandemic slows to the point where the NFL feels like they aren’t morally obligated to help commit resources to fight the spread.

-It is now the Indianapolis Colts, not the Tennessee Titans who are in the lead for him.

-The offer from the Titans is likely right on the edge of $20 million per year if not more, and the Colts is probably worth even more.

I will keep updating this as we go along.