Six weeks after the Tennessee Titans fired long-time GM Jon Robinson, they announced the hiring of Ran Carthon as the next GM.
Carthon was the Director of Player Personnel for the San Francisco 49ers and he brings 15 years of expereince with him.
Front office decisions are always a team effort, so you have to be careful attributing all successes or all failures to GM candidates. Having said that, I think we know enough about Ran Carthon’s responsibilities over the years to make some educated guesses about how he will fit with the Tennessee Titans.
These are the five things that we know about the Tennessee Titans new GM.
1. Good news for Ryan Tannehill’s chances with the Tennessee Titans
The San Francisco 49ers have gone to the NFC Championship Game twice with Jimmy Garoppolo and to the Super Bowl once with him. They are currently one of the four remaining teams in the NFC and could very well make it to another NFCCG game, but this time they are doing it with Brock Purdy who is famously the most recent “Mr. Irrelavent” rookie.
While that certainly doesn’t mean that Carthon won’t entertain the idea of trading up in this draft to grab a quarterback, it does mean that he will hold this team to a high standard.
At their best, Ryan Tannehill has been a better quarterback than Jimmy G and you don’t have to go back too far (2020 and occasionally in 2021 when they were even mildly healthy) to find evidence that he can thrive in the right system.
Right now, Carthon feels like a guy who is more concerned about building a great supporting cast (including coaches) instead of blaming a good quarterback for not being elite.
2. Mike Vrabel will have no excuses for a bad coaching staff
Outside of Matt LaFleur, every coach in the Mike Vrabel era has been hand-picked by Vrabel himself. There have been some good hires and some very bad hires in the bunch, but Ran Carthon should be someone that helps prevent some of those catastrophes going forward.
Look at the layers and layers of talented coaches that the San Francisco 49ers have had in Ran Carthon’s time.
On the defensive side of the ball Robert Saleh seems to have the New York Jets on the right track and current DC DeMeco Ryans will have his pick of HC jobs this season.
Offensively, Mike McDaniel took the Miami Dolphins to the playoffs in his first season as a HC and instantly revived the career of Tua Tagovailoa.
Mike LaFleur climbed the ladder in San Francisco before becoming the Jets’ OC, and he might be the next OC of the Titans. He was fired this offseason for failing to develop Zach Wilson, though the offense seemed to work well enough when the other quarterbacks were on the field so it might not be a LaFleur problem…
If “collaboration” really is as important as the press releases have said, then Mike Vrabel should go outside of his circle and use Carthon’s experience as a tool to help him find the best hires available.
3. Tennessee Titans should see drafts exactly like the ones they saw with Jon Robinson
During Jon Robinson’s time as GM, he rarely had a high pick to spend in the first round but when he did he had some really solid hits. While his biggest flaw was not re-signing players like Jack Conklin, Corey Davis, Adoree , etc. (though the team didn’t always have the money to keep those players), finding talent in the draft was rarely an issue.
The other issue that he had was taking swings that completely missed in the first round when he didn’t have a pick inside the top-20.
I wrote about this recently, but there is nothing in Ran Carthon’s history that suggests that he learned how to nail first-round draft picks from any of his bosses. In fact, in the years where he has been the right-hand man to a GM, the results have been underwhelming despite every pick being a top-13 pick.
However, that can be put directly on the GM, and Carthon has drawn rave reviews from people like The Athletic’s David Lombardi for what he has been directly responsible for in the middle/late rounds of the draft.
In a video detailing what the Tennessee Titans are gaining and what the 49ers are losing, Lombardi credits Carthon with hits like
George Kittle, TE
D.J. Reed, CB
Dre Greenlaw, LB
Elijah Mitchell, RB
Jauan Jennings, WR
Brock Purdy, QB
And he goes on to say that he is probably forgetting some other hits, those are just the ones off the top of his head.
If he can continue to draft well like Jon Robinson did without the wild misses later in the first round, and if he can find ways to sign those guys to extensions, then the Tennessee Titans can reload this roster quickly.
4. You might want to be a little more worried about Jeffery Simmons
It is hard to know exactly how much input Ran Carthon would have had in the DeForest Buckner trade in 2020, but it is a little concerning that the 49ers had one of the most dominant defensive tackles in the league and they traded him for a pick that turned into another defensive tackle.
For reference, Buckner wanted a massive new contract after he was a playmaker on a defense that helped lead the 49ers to the Super Bowl. While he was and is a fantastic player, the team disagreed on his value and ended up trading him and trying to replace him in the draft.
Basically the same thing that Tennessee Titans fans just saw with A.J. Brown except Buckner wasn’t also trying to force his way out.
Having said that, I think the team knows that they would be putting themselves in an absolute PR nightmare scenario if they even entertained the idea of trading a star player after the fallout from the A.J. Brown trade.
Still, given Carthon’s past in a very similar situation I would say that the chance of a Simmons trade went up from 1% to 5% with this hiring, especially if he is a piece involved in a potential trade for the first pick.
Speaking of which…
5. He won’t be afraid to make massive trades to acquire players he likes
During his time with the San Francisco 49ers and St. Louis Rams, he was a decision-maker in a front office that traded:
-Up to the 1st overall pick to draft Jared Goff (1st round pick, future 1st, 2nd, 2nd, 3rd, future 3rd)
-With the New England Patriots for Jimmy Garoppolo (2nd)
-Into the top-5 to draft Trey Lance (1st, future 1st, future 1st, future 3rd)
-With the Carolina Panthers for Christian McCaffery (2, 3, 4, future 5th)
Half of those were good decisions and half of those look pretty rough, but that front office was ready to take swings when they could and Ran Carthon will probably have the same mindset.
One of the themes that was repeated over and over by people employed by the Tennessee Titans was that Amy Adams Strunk believes that this team needs a reload and not a rebuild, meaning that they should be able to compete again immediately.
If that is what she believes, then the Tennessee Titans could look to make a splash on the trade market this year and Carthon has done a good job identifying veterans to trade for.
While some in the fan base are tempted to trade up to the first pick even if that means giving up Jeffery Simmons (no thank you) I think this team is much more likely to trade a top-50 pick in exchange for a veteran that they believe will push them up from being a good team to a great team.