2023 Offseason
The Titans began the offseason with their most important move, finding a new GM, and it would be Ran Carthon from the San Francisco 49ers. Carthon, while not boasting tremendous experience, excelled when it came to building relationships, and showed promise when it came to making analytically-based decisions, something that was a complaint about Robinson.
The move was generally well received by those in NFL circles, and it was going to be exciting to see his vision for this Titans roster. Unfortunately for him, there was not much he was going to be able to do in his first offseason.
The Titans were in a bad spot salary cap wise due to the bad contracts and restructures made under Robinson, and they had to cut guys in order to even get cap space. It was also going to be wise to move on from some veterans since the current window was shutting, and that is exactly what Carthon did.
He cut longtime stalwarts Taylor Lewan and Ben Jones, and also got rid of guys such as Zach Cunningham, Robert Woods, Bud Dupree, and Randy Bullock. Even the heart and soul of the team, Kevin Byard, ended up at a crossroads with the team after he initially refused to take a paycut, and he was eventually traded during the season.
In free agency, it was nothing too fancy, but mainly low risk, under the radar moves such as Azeez Al-Shaair, Andre Dillard, Daniel Brunskill, Arden Key, and Sean Murphy-Bunting. He even re-signed Aaron Brewer to be the team's starting center, and while he had shown some upside, this and the other signings were reflective of how little Carthon had to work with in free agency this offseason.
His first ever draft pick was guard Peter Skoronski from Northwestern, and some were disappointed about taking a guard 11th overall, but it has turned out to be a solid pick. Overall, Carthon's first draft class has been not great, but not awful, and the only pick that truly does not look good is Will Levis in the second round.
Now there were some exciting moves for the Titans, most importantly, not repeating the same mistake with AJ Brown and re-signing Jeffery Simmons to a big contract. He also brought in DeAndre Hopkins on a cheap deal in July, which worked out really well.
But once again, this offseason was never going to mean much for Carthon, as it was his first one and he had severely limited resources to work with. We had to wait until the next year to truly find out more about him, and once he could actually splurge, that is exactly what happened.