Grading the Tennessee Titans biggest free agency moves
By Brady Akins
The biggest parts of free agency for the Tennessee Titans have came and went, so let’s talk about the moves they made to their 2020 roster.
While last year the Tennessee Titans looked like they were in search of establishing an identity by adding coveted players like Rodger Saffold, Adam Humphries and Cameron Wake.
This season, it looked like the Titans had a different message, which was continuity.
Not that Titans general manager Jon Robinson’s comparatively hands-off approach to the free agency period is inherently a bad thing. Tennessee didn’t spend their early 2020 offseason making the headline-grabbing moves that the Indianapolis Colts did by signing Philip Rivers and trading a first-round pick for Deforest Buckner.
But they also didn’t trade their best player for the equivalent of an Arby’s gift card and a three-month subscription to Southern Living magazine as the Houston Texans did– so it’s essentially a wash.
Robinson has never been a ‘big-game hunter’ when it comes to free agency, preferring to make most of his roster-building noise in the NFL draft and target younger players with the upside to start on the team early and often.
To his credit, Robinson’s building strategy has worked up to this point, even if it leaves more than a few Titans fans impatiently waiting year after year as free agents fly off the board. But Tennessee tends to look for only the essential pieces when it comes to free agency, an approach they took once again this year.
Tennessee brought back some key players at key positions, invested (maybe not heavily enough) in the pass-rushing weakness on the defensive side, and let a handful of players walk away, while cutting and trading a few surprising faces.
By and large, it was another underwhelming round of free agent moves. Some of it helped, some of it hurt and some of it left us scratching our heads. But now that it’s mostly over and done with, let’s play the role of Armchair GM and break down which moves Robinson got right and which moves make him a terrible, irredeemable general manager.