Titans need to sign Jadeveon Clowney now, worry about Vic Beasley later

Clowney and the DT shortage

The Tennessee Titans traded Jurrell Casey for a 7th round pick, but they mainly traded him because he was going to cost a lot of money over the next 3 years and he probably was going to be relegated to one of these rotational roles sooner rather than later.

However, that did leave the Titans a little short-handed at DT. Right now it looks like Jeffery Simmons, Daquan Jones, Isaiah Mack, and Larrell Murchison will be the top-4 DTs and I think that group will be solid even though they will be a little bit top-heavy.

The problem with that group is that no one is going to provide a quick interior pass rush, and that is something that the Titans lacked last season. Combining a lack of interior pass rush with conservative play calling is a great way to have a bad defense in the NFL.

If the Titans are hoping to find that on the open market, then they need to look around because as of this morning, five defensive tackles have opted out of the 2020 season and if a few of the big names at DT go off of the market, then that position gets thin really quickly.

Clowney would be huge in that role because Mike Vrabel loves to use a player like Clowney as a stand-up player mugging the A-gap, or as a nickel DT if they are big enough. While he didn’t do a lot of that last year with the Seahawks, you can see Clowney doing a lot of that with Vrabel as his in 2017.

Going back to the last slide, if Clowney’s role is primarily as a pass rusher to use opposite Harold Landry, then this is a way that you can get guys like Derick Roberson into the mix on 3rd downs if you want speed rushers on the outside and someone to get quick initial pressure up the middle.