Titans trade with Baltimore Ravens would unite Alabama Heisman winners

Could the Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens make a deal?

It is always hard to make a deal with a rival, but the Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens have made it work before.

Very few seasons in Titans history have felt like a better time for the team to make a trade than this one. There is a great chance that a lack of information makes the 2021 draft more speculative and less of a sure-thing (as much as any draft can be a sure thing) which means that picks may be less valuable in 6 months.

On top of that, the Titans have locked down most of their young stars with contracts and they have the cap space to continue to lock down their talent after making moves to clear space this offseason.

Finally, it looks like the Titans will get a 3rd round compensatory pick for Jack Conklin which means they will have four picks inside the top-100 for the third time in Jon Robinson’s career.

With the team on the precipice of a Super Bowl last season, why wouldn’t Robinson make an effort to make sure that the strength of this team is even stronger?

For the Titans, that means that the running game needs to be priority one, two and three which has been made evident by the offseason moves: spending a 1st round pick on a mammoth right tackle, drafting a running back in the top-100, and locking up their QB/RB battery for at least one more year and likely more.

So what is the deal?

Why would the Ravens make a trade with the Titans?

The Ravens are a very good team, but last season they peaked at the wrong time and a key injury hurt them.

If you forgot, the Ravens didn’t get a full season of Mark Ingram because of an injury late in the year that hampered him into the playoffs. That is hardly his fault and he gutted it out to be active against the Titans, but in the end, the Ravens were never really close to Tennessee in that game.

Baltimore obviously has thought that Ingram was only a Band-Aid since they signed him considering that they drafted a running back in the 4th round in 2019 (Justice Hill) and one in the 2nd round this year (J.K. Dobbins).

So is it crazy to think that they might want to move on from Ingram? Don’t forget, the Ravens are going to need every dollar they can get at the end of this season when Lamar Jackson is able to negotiate a new deal and Mark Ingram is going to cost them over $5 million this season.

You may not think that is a lot, but that is only because you may not realize the cap situation that the Ravens are in right now:

That is a lot of dead money and not a lot of cap that will be rolling over into 2021 for a team that needs to pay an EDGE they franchise tagged and a franchise QB.

Baltimore Ravens receive:

Projected trade compensation

Ravens receive: Tennessee Titans 2021 4th round pick

Titans receive: Mark Ingram

Over the last five years, running back trades before the season starts net the team trading away the running back a Day 3 pick.

I am giving the Ravens a good deal here because I think that the Titans need proven depth on the roster at running back and I also think that Jon Robinson thinks that 4th round draft picks are overvalued by the NFL as a whole.

With four picks in the first three rounds, I think the Titans look to move back and collect more picks for even more flexibility during the actual draft. However, the chances are that they won’t need to replace many (if any) starters in the 2021 NFL Draft and the team doesn’t even look for starters on Day 3.

This gives the Ravens more draft picks to move around if they want to or to replace parts on a team that is about to get very expensive, very quickly.

Why the Tennessee Titans would make a trade.

Right now the Tennessee Titans have two running backs with the potential to play significant snaps. One of those is a rookie running back who started two years at App. State.

While I like Darrynton Evans a lot as a prospect, I think that he is going to take some time to develop to the NFL game and it would make more sense to go into the season very prepared at running back instead of trusting a rookie.

The other running back is obviously Derrick Henry who was one of the most overworked running backs in the NFL last year:

That is after a start to the season where Dion Lewis was getting entirely too many carries, so that number is probably lower than it was during the Titans 10-game stretch with Ryan Tannehill in the regular season.

Why not bolster that group with a running back like Mark Ingram who has proven that he can be a true 1A/1B type running back that carries the ball 200+ times if he needs to do that.

Poetic Justice

Alabama is one of the most prolific football factories in the history of the NCAA, but shockingly they have only had two Heisman winners. And who are those two? You guessed it (or read the title) Mark Ingram and Derrick Henry.

Those two missed the chance to play on the same team in college, but there is no reason for them to miss out on it in the NFL.

Both running backs complement each other very well with Mark Ingram being the tough pinball who requires physicality and effort to bring down and Derrick Henry being the big-play machine who makes his money off of broken defenses who are worn out after playing a physical game.

Throw in Darrynton Evans and you have the perfect trio of running backs for a team that likes to assert their dominance over teams by running the ball and then punishing defenses by running play-action if they can’t stop the run with only seven men.

Tennessee is home to the biggest portion of Alabama fans in the nation and having Ingram and Henry together would be a great way to get the fans very invested in this team if they weren’t already.

That alone isn’t enough to make the move, but when you consider the personality of the staff and the players in this locker room you have to appreciate what a great fit it would be to get Ingram to Tennessee.