Strangest day in the Seattle Seahawks and Tennessee Titans cold war over Jadeveon Clowney

What a roller coaster of emotions for the Tennessee Titans in the chase for Jadeveon Clowney.

In about 24 hours we have gone from curiosity about the lack of an official Vic Beasley signing, to the Tennessee Titans being completely out of the Jadeveon Clowney race, to “well, hold on a second” and it isn’t even 5 PM.

Nearly every other season I would be fed up with the chase at this point, but given what is going on outside of the (generally) self-contained world of the NFL this has felt more like an escape than a chore.

I am referring to the Tennessee Titans (and others) pursuit of former first overall pick Jadeveon Clowney.

There is a chance that you haven’t been keeping up so I will go into a brief recap of the twists and turns fans have gone through the last few weeks, but if you want to get into the real detailed conspiracy theories then check out what I wrote a little over a week ago.

If you don’t want to go check that out (which you definitely should), don’t worry because I condensed the main “confirmed” theories into this next slide and you should be able to keep up with why this has been such a weird day.

What, what happened (Tennessee Titans version)?

Alright well where to begin…

Remember these are just the quick hitters that should give you a basic outline of the twists and turns of #ClowneyWatch:

-The Tennessee Titans allow Jack Conklin to walk in free agency and shift the majority of Ryan Tannehill‘s salary to 2021 and later to make sure they have plenty of cap space for a move or two this year.

-Vic Beasley is “signed” with the Titans even though that wasn’t immediately announced by the team (more on that later). It turns out the deal is for one year and a $9.5 million cap hit, so nothing that would guarantee the Titans being out of the hunt for Clowney but not reassuring.

–Jurrell Casey is traded to the Denver Broncos for a 7th round pick and nearly $40 million in cap space over the next three years. All signs point to this being a clear indicator of something coming immediately…right?

-(March 22nd) Rumors fly around that Clowney has potentially agreed with the Titans in principal and that all that stands between the parties and a deal is a physical.

Wait, what happened? (Seattle Seahawks version)

While all of this is going on, only one other team is clearly in the hunt for Jadeveon Clowney: the Seattle Seahawks.

Rumors float in and out that teams like the New York Jets, New York Giants, Indianapolis Colts, and others might be interested but for the most part these rumors are quickly dismissed.

The only confirmed party is the Seahawks trying to re-sign Clowney, but again the Tennessee Titans are being heavily implied as the likely landing spot for Clowney.

-Between March 17-25 the Seahawks sign or re-sign 9 players and trade for Quinton Dunbar leading fans to speculate that Seattle is out of the race for Jadeveon Clowney given their lack of cap space left for the 2020 season.

-March 26: While speculation is rampant that the Seahawks could free up more cap space if they wanted to with the release of a few players, no news comes out about potential moves.

This may seem irrelevant if they are out of the hunt for Clowney but is important for what comes next. The most important thing isn’t necessarily what happens from March 17-25 but rather the radio silence from March 26 until earlier today (March 31st).

That eerie quiet mirrors the Titans silence and the guesses about what may be happening with Clowney behind the scenes.

Here come the cuts from the Seahawks

Around 2:30 PM CST, the Seattle Seahawks ended the cold war for Clowney by cutting two different players to free up $5 million and to raise their cap from $11 million to $16 million before factoring in draft picks.

Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Titans were out of the race and that Clowney to the Seahawks was a done deal. However, it was two moves that were speculated as potential precursors to a deal for the Pro Bowl EDGE.

Again, all this did was indicate that the Seahawks were still a potential threat to land Clowney because it would have been impossible to sign him to a deal with what was functionally $6 million or so in cap space for 2020.

Now it was back to being a two-horse race instead of a “sure thing” for the Tennessee Titans to bring Mike Vrabel‘s former protege back into the fold. But, here is where things start to look dire for the Tennessee Titans who had a big question mark over their free agency class.

Titans make their move official

If you remember, I started this off by saying that the Titans still hadn’t officially announced Vic Beasley? Well that was strange because they had already made the other signings of the offseason official, so why take so long to announce your biggest move?

Well, Mike Herndon pointed this out yesterday as it became clear that the Titans hadn’t finalized this deal yet:

So you have a $9.5 million deal out there unsigned for a player that plays the same position as your most coveted free agent target. Naturally, the wheels got turning and new life was breathed into #ClowneyWatch.

Well, at the same time that all of the Seahawks cuts were getting announced Titans fans got to see this pop up on their timelines from the Tennessee Titans official account:

https://twitter.com/Titans/status/1245062796733227010

That was not the EDGE that Titans fans wanted to see announced today and the timing was so strange that some people started to say the sky was falling. To be fair to those people, it wasn’t crazy to think that the timing was suspicious and that the events were connected.

Well, that is a bummer but I guess the ball is in Clowney’s court now and all both teams can do is sit back and wait for the inevitable re-signing to occur right? Congratulations Seattle Seahawks, time for Titans fans to start looking at trade targets.

Not so fast, because then this report came out and threw everyone for a loop…again.

Jadeveon Clowney isn’t the only one who can shop around.

It looks like the Seattle Seahawks are set up to sign a 2019 Pro Bowl EDGE, but it may not be Clowney.

Everyone has forgotten about Everson Griffen who quietly ended up on the market when this madness was starting to get going. While Clowney was biding his time to get his best deal, he may have inadvertently ended up costing himself a shot to return to the Seahawks:

Now, that clearly says that Clowney is the domino that needs to fall first but now the Seattle Seahawks aren’t as desperate as they were a week or two ago. If this falls through then they aren’t out of luck, they just go to option 1B instead of forcing a fit somewhere else.

You could make the argument that traditionally Pete Carroll and the Seahawks have had more success with players like Griffen who have been in the latter part of their career and who have a specific niche on defense.

Making the connection even stronger is that Griffen played his entire college career with Pete Carroll at USC and the two get along well enough for this to be a possibility.

From that standpoint, Carroll has coached Griffen for four times longer than he coached Clowney, albeit a decade ago. Maybe the most comfortable option for Carroll isn’t Clowney who missed a decent chunk of the season last year.

What are we watching for now?

Alright so now we know…nothing?

Ok, that isn’t true but it is still a very cloudy picture. Like with all of these rumor compilations, I am going to do a quick TL;DR and then we can talk about what to look for now.

-Seattle cleared space for another free agent, though right now they only have about half of the functional cap space as the Tennessee Titans.

-The Titans gave up the ability to blow the Seahawks offer away with upfront guarantees by making the deal with Vic Beasley official.

-The Seahawks aren’t locked into a Clowney or nothing situation. Instead, they have the option to go after an extremely productive player who is more familiar with the HC than Clowney: Everson Griffen.

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As for what to look for next, the Seahawks can almost pull even with the Titans in cap space if they release Justin Britt and/or restructure K.J. Wright‘s deal. Those moves would signal that they are interested in making a competitive offer for Clowney that can match the immediate payday that the Titans could offer.

The Tennessee Titans don’t have many moves left that they could make to increase cap space, though with rumors of interest in likely top-40 WR Jalen Reagor swirling around there is once scenario that opens up some cap space.

If the Titans decide that they want to move Corey Davis for a top-100 pick, then they would free up cap space in 2021 when his 5th-year option would come up. That would give them the potential to offer an aggressive 2-year deal with a lot of guarantees or incentives.

Other than that it looks like we are about at the endgame where neither team can do much more to improve their offers to Clowney unless they keep putting more guarantees in year 3 or 4 of a potential deal.

April 1st update: Confirmation from the Tennessee Titans, Mike Vrabel vote of confidence

Today Titans fans got to hear from Mike Vrabel and GM Jon Robinson to discuss the offseason plans, free agency moves, the status of the team, trades, etc.

There was some news on a potential Derrick Henry extension, but the most important note was that Robinson did confirm that the Titans have been in contact with Mike Vrabel’s former star EDGE.

This is pretty big because it is the first time that any team has publically been linked to Jadeveon Clowney other than the Seattle Seahawks. Without knowing what exactly “touched base” means in this context, we can confidently say that the Titans are interested in Clowney.

Along with this message from Jon Robinson was a vote of confidence from the Head Coach Mike Vrabel, who said this when asked about Clowney and whether or not a health issue is holding up a deal.

Vrabel doesn’t heap out praise to star players willingly, so to hear him not only acknowledge that the Titans were interested in Clowney (instead of blowing off the question) but to give him that respect is very interesting.

That wasn’t the only move of the day though as a new free agent signing and a comment on potential cost from ESPN came up that shed more light on a potential deal.

April 1st update: A new price tag and potential complications

The Tennessee Titans already had a pretty deep group of EDGEs, so no one was expecting a non-Clowney move to happen at this point in free agency, but here we are.

Yes, the Titans decided to bring back Kamalei Correa to round out the EDGE position. Correa finished the season with 4 sacks in his last 7 games including the postseason and he has seemed like a Mike Vrabel guy for a while now.

Now, the Vic Beasley signing had no bearing on Jadeveon Clowney because the two play very different roles despite both being EDGEs. Clowney is better vs the run on the outside and is a fun nickel DT.

On the other hand, Beasley is a designated pass rusher who has the speed and burst to cause problems on the outside. That is the best ability an EDGE can have and hopefully he gets to show that off a lot this year, but the reason why Clowney is still a target is because Beasley isn’t going to give you much at all anchoring vs the run.

It is just a one-year deal for Correa so it isn’t like this makes the future cloudy for the Titans either. If anything it looks like a backup plan so that they aren’t going to be backed into any decisions they don’t want to make financially.

Speaking of money, we got a new report today on Jadeveon Clowney dropping his price tag:

The price dropping means that the aforementioned cold war is working and that both the Titans and Seahawks have hunkered down and instead of making pitches to Clowney, both sides are preparing for life without him and letting him look their offers without budging.

Again, another report that says this is just down to two teams and if Clowney’s price is dropping now, there is a good chance that he isn’t waiting until training camp to decide. Otherwise why not just wait until someone panics and if they don’t, then you can drop your price?