The Tennessee Titans are a fundamentally different team in 2024 than they were in 2023, and it is time to do an audit on this new and improved roster.
When people in Nashville talk about the Titans roster, you will almost certainly hear the phrase "thin" which is a fair critique, but we need to put that in perspective.
While the NFL is a league of attrition, people overvalue depth. It is nice to have depth, but if you advocate for a team like the Tennessee Titans to sacrifice top-end talent just to build depth, you are missing the forest for the trees.
Championship teams are built on greatness, and there is actually a formula out there that the NFL Network's Daniel Jeremiah has talked about a lot. He calls it the "Championship Formula" and he believes that all great teams try to build around this blueprint to make a successful team.
The formula is:
-1 quarterback
-3 offenisve playmakers
-3 quality offensive linemen
-2 pass rushers
-3 defensive playmakers
The goal is to have as many good or great players at those positions as possible, and GMs should always be pursuing upgrading one or more of those position groups. The thought process behind this is that even if you are missing a few players or you are asking a player to try to rise to the occasion at one of those positions, your focus is on the right thing and that process will lead to success.
For example, this is what Jeremiah and the NFL research department put together for the AFC West. Blue is an elite player, green is a good player, yellow is a player who has a question mark, purple is an unproven player, and red is a player where there is no clear answer.
The Championship Foundation for the Chargers entering free agency, in conjunction with @MoveTheSticks pic.twitter.com/jaJk0XmgeM
— NFL Research (@NFLResearch) March 6, 2024
They never got around to making one for the Titans as far as I could tell, so I decided to look at where the roster sits before the draft and look at which players might be candidates for each position.