Add Quinnen Williams to the list of ideal trade targets between Titans and Jets

The New York Jets need to take notes from the Miami Dolphins.

I made a list of ideal trade targets for the Tennessee Titans and New York Jets a week ago, but since then so much has already changed.

At that time, it looked like Jamal Adams was on his way out, but that didn’t mean that the Jets were going to completely burn their roster down. There were names out there like Yannick Ngakoue and A.J. Green that could be involved as pieces in a trade where the Jets come out with a blue-chip player to give a big deal to while remaining relevant.

Going even further, why not call up the Washington Football team and offer them Jamal Adams for a 1st round pick and Brandon Scherff and at least try to build draft capital while adding players to help or protect your young quarterback.

But, that isn’t what the Jets did with Jamal Adams and it wasn’t the last major change the defense would see in the last seven days.

I am a big believer in excellent drafting and being the key to revitalizing franchises, but it is incredibly rare that it happens in just a season and that is the only way that the Jets front office and head coach are going to survive this situation.

So let me tell you why they need to burn it down to the ground now, and why that includes a big name being added to the trade list between the Titans and Jets.

Burn it dowwwwn

The Jets got a king’s ransom for Adams and they took their two 1sts and a 3rd and ran.

Now, I am not saying that is a bad idea, but I am saying that they did nothing to help their quarterback and they made their defense worse for at least 2020. You can’t have an offseason where you lose your team’s best receiver, trade away your best overall player, and then fail to get back anything that will help immediately and keep up the facade of trying to win games in 2020.

All of that would have been bad enough, but news also came out this morning that C.J. Mosely was going to be opting out of the 2020 NFL season.

That all but guarantees that the Jets will have a bottom-5 defense in the NFL this season, which puts even more pressure on your quarterback to win games without talent around him. It is truly a nightmare situation for New York.

You have to understand that every year a quarterback has to go through situations like this, you get closer and closer to breaking them and causing damage you can’t fix.

In 2020, there are going to be some teams that really mentally check out after the first month or two of the season and the Jets might already be there. At this point, you need to focus on maximizing your assets and while I don’t think that means trading Sam Darnold, I think it means that everyone else is on the table, including…

Quinnen Williams, DT

The great news for the Jets is that they don’t have to look like fools here. Last year the Miami Dolphins bit the bullet and traded MInkah Fitzpatrick for a 1st round pick from the Steelers, who at the time looked like a bottom-10 team in the NFL.

It was a deal that made both teams look good because the Dolphins weren’t going to win many games in 2019 and having a great defensive player at a non-premium position wasn’t going to do them any good at all. Notice any similarities?

Another similar thread between the two teams is that both Alabama prospects didn’t light it up without talent around them in their rookie season. Using Pro Football Reference’s AV (approximate value) statistic, Fitzpatrick’s rookie year was a “4” and Quinnen Williams was a “5”.

For context, Fitzpatrick’s was a “19” this season.

The Tennessee Titans have talent at defensive tackle the same way that the Steelers had talent in the back seven. Several players around him can be dominant if given the chance, and they might be worth more than the sum of their parts if they were together.

Williams was a consensus top-5 overall prospect in his draft as was Fitzpatrick in his year. In fact,  Dane Brugler had both Fitzpatrick and Williams as the #2 overall player in their class.

Both are rare players that are talented enough to deserve a 1st round draft pick in a trade, but who don’t play a premium position and can’t take over games by themselves.

If you were a Titans’ fan, would trade a first round pick to have a defensive line that looked like this:

Harold Landry-Quinnen Williams-Jeffery Simmons-Jadeveon Clowney

If you were a Jets’ fan, would you give up Williams to have a 2020 draft haul that looked like this in the top-40 picks:

-Ja’mar Chase WR, LSU

-Rondale Moore WR, Purdue

-Alex Leatherwood OT, Alabama

-Trey Smith iOL, Tennessee

Both sides should absolutely say yes, and it is a deal that likely won’t happen, but one that would help both teams reach their goals much quicker.

Now that I have touched on this fever dream or a possibility, let’s go through the much more reasonable list of names that the Titans could target from the Jets.

Jamison Crowder, WR

The Tennessee Titans let Tajae Sharpe walk in free agency and I think part of that may have been that they thought they would have had more time to negotiate with him.

Between losing Jack Conklin, signing Dennis Kelly, trading Jurrell Casey, giving Ryan Tannehill a new deal, letting Logan Ryan walk, and finally figuring out how to get a new deal done with Derrick Henry, there have been a lot of pivotal moments this offseason.

Sharpe was this team’s WR4 and while I know some people are confident in Kalif Raymond, I wonder if you will have that same confidence if he is asked to play a significant number of snaps in a crucial game.

Last year, Sharpe made significant plays on a regular basis, and from when Tannehill won the starting job until the bye, Sharpe was actually the team’s leader in touchdown receptions.

In my opinion, there isn’t currently anyone on the roster who could do that off of the bench which is why Crowder makes sense for Tennessee.

Now, Crowder is expensive and he is set to make $21.5 million over the next two years, although only $11.5 million of that is guaranteed, but that might not be a problem for the Titans.

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The Jets drafted Denzel Mims in the second round this season and they signed Breshad Perriman in the offseason. They have fulfilled their duty of giving Sam Darnold more than one target to throw to, and I am going to guess that Le’Veon Bell will also get more catches than the average RB in the NFL this season.

So it wouldn’t surprise me to try to get away from this contract long term.

If Crowder would take a restructured deal to come to Tennessee (nothing as crazy as the Tannehill deal, but something much cheaper) it makes sense for everyone.

New York gets cap space and a draft pick, Crowder gets a new shot on a different team, and the Titans get a wide receiver that can move inside or outside and who might be able to take for Corey Davis if his asking price gets high this offseason.

Steve McClendon, DT

McClendon is one of the weirder case studies in the NFL because he has been consistently good as a rotational defensive tackle, but he has had his best seasons after he turned 30. Just check out his impact plays:

First 6 years 24-29 years old (1,463 snaps):13 TFLs, 5 sacks

Last 4 years 30-33 years old (1,806 snaps): 28 TFLs, 7.5 sacks

That is pretty great from a rotational DT who does most of the dirty work in the trenches and isn’t usually put in a position to be the guy that makes the play.

Another thing that makes him so attractive as a trade target is that he on year two of a two-year deal, and it is smart not to overcommit to a 34-year-old defensive tackle even after he had a career year.

Look at it this way, last year Jurrell Casey had 5 sacks and 5 TFLs in 872 snaps and cost more than $10 million per year. McClendon had 2.5 sacks and 10 TFLs last year in just 465 snaps and he while costs less than $3 million this year.

That seems like a no brainer because you have a 34-year-old defensive tackle on a team that isn’t going to be good enough to make use of his talent. Why wouldn’t you try to get something out of him before he leaves next year.

Trevon Wesco, TE/FB

Last year the Titans offense seemed to get even better once they brought in Khari Blasingame, but per his agent, he has been accused of some troubling allegations.

If there is a chance that this is true, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Amy Adams Strunk call on Jon Robinson to make a move that gets the team away from Blasingame.

There is a chance that Wesco and Blasingame could coexist, but I feel like a trade would only happen if the Titans felt like they needed to move on from Blasingame.

Focusing on Wesco, I think that it is a bad idea to even have Wesco on the Jets roster because if he is on the field it means that New York is setting Le’Veon Bell up to fail. Maybe not intentionally, but if you look at where Bell has thrived throughout his career, most of the time that involves him being the only back in the backfield.

There are reasons why this makes sense, but ultimately it comes down to what defenses you can force the other team to play and how to utilize Bell’s vision and patience the best.

On the other hand, the Titans often use a fullback or an extra tight end that sift blocks to set up creases for Derrick Henry on cutback lanes. Watch how well Wesco can block courtesy of Brian Baldinger:

It isn’t always pretty, but it doesn’t have to be. The goal of these plays is to freeze defenders long enough to provide Derrick Henry a chance to build momentum. If the Jets are willing to sell low on Wesco then the Titans could get a cheap blocking TE/FB to pair with Jonnu Smith who is about to get a big contract this offseason.

This gives the Titans long term depth and consistency at tight end at a reasonable cost for a player that the Jets shouldn’t even have on their roster right now. Win-win.