What is the damage for the Titans?
Right now the Tennessee Titans might just be the most hated team in the NFL.
Now, it isn’t like the team was going out and trying to get other teams sick or lying about their symptoms before a game, but they broke the rules and the NFL is going to punish them for it.
Since we know that, the question moves from “will they be punished?” to “how bad is it going to be?” and no one really knows the answer. No matter what precedent anyone believes the league has set in the past, there is no way you can look back and say, “Hmm. Which situation in the last 100 years is most like the Tennessee Titans practicing off-site after being told not to after being caught circumventing or outright breaking protocols put in place to prevent a widespread virus taking over the league?”
The way I see it, there are really only three things the NFL can do to the Titans. Obviously they could combine some of these punishments, but it isn’t going to be some new way to punish a team that has never been seen before like making a team play with 10 guys on each side of the ball for a game.
So what are those categories? Well, let’s start with the one that feels the most appropriate.
Suspension
In my opinion, the NFL’s investigation should be about finding out whether they did enough to communicate that they didn’t want any gatherings to take place and if they have hard evidence that they did that.
Once that is clear, then they have to find out if that information was given to players before the off-site practices occurred.
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From there only three things could have happened, and all three scenarios have a clear person to blame and subsequently suspend.
Option 1: The Tennessee Titans front office and coaching staff heard the league’s ruling and then didn’t tell the players that they weren’t allowed to gather. In that scenario, Mike Vrabel should be the person suspended for not making sure his players knew that was wrong.
Option 2: The Titans front office and coaching staff heard the league’s ruling and then relayed that to their players. From there, the players went rogue and decided to schedule a practice on their own and try to skirt around the rules saying they didn’t know. Here, whoever was in charge of organizing the workouts should be suspended.
Option 3: Both the Titans coaches and the Titans players knew about the NFL’s rules and they agreed to disobey anyway. It may seem like this should be both parties being suspended, but I actually lean towards suspending Vrabel considering it should be his responsibility to stop this and enforce what the NFL is asking the team to do.
The Titans roster is dangerously thin already, so a few suspensions might be as close to forcing losses on the Titans as you can get without technically forcing them to forfeit games. Speaking of…
Forfeit
I think this is the least likely to happen, but I also think that it is the second most fitting punishment here.
Where I struggle is whether or not this should award the opposing team with a win or if it should just be ruled a no contest. On one hand, if this is a punishment then the league should give the Titans a loss and the opposing team a win.
On the other hand, if you look at this as more of an “act of God” situation where you align this outbreak with a hurricane or something like that, then it doesn’t feel fair to fully give one team a loss without a chance to play and one team a win that might push someone else out of the playoffs.
Out of pure fairness, I think that it should be a no-contest and the way the league would make this appear like a punishment for the Titans is that they would lose one or two home games this season depending on how many games they go back. In addition to that lost revenue and advantage, the league could say that any playoff tiebreakers would give an advantage to the Bills or Steelers if the two finished with identical records to each other.
Loss of money or worse…draft picks.
This is the one that terrifies me as a Titans fan. There are very few things more valuable than a draft pick, even wins.
The NFL Draft is the only time when your team truly has a chance to make big leaps forward and change themselves for the next decade or more. Careers and franchises are built around draft picks and even if you are outstanding in free agency, losing a draft pick and getting nothing back for it is beyond punishing.
Money is one thing and I am sure that Amy Adams Strunk is much more worried about that than I am, but the draft pick is huge.
Just for the sake of argument, imagine the league thinking that this was an offense worth docking a 1st round pick but the Titans talk them down to a 2nd round pick. Over the last five years, the Titans have gotten AJ Brown, Harold Landry, Kristian Fulton, and Derrick Henry in the 2nd round.
Now, Jon Robinson has been great hitting on those picks, but look at the Arizona Cardinals who are terrible at drafting. They managed to turn a 2nd round pick into DeAndre Hopkins last season and deals like that happen all the time.
This is the option that should scare you all, and you should be furious if it comes to this.