With DeAndre Hopkins, it's time to shelve rebuilding talk for Tennessee Titans | Estes
My first reaction to the Tennessee Titans’ being set to win the DeAndre Hopkins free-agent sweepstakes? Probably the same as yours:
Good for them. Had to happen.
The worst receiving room in the NFL badly needed something, and Hopkins was clearly that someone. With training camp almost here, the Titans weren’t going to do any better than a receiver only a few years removed from a run of four Pro Bowls in a row.
He’s not a sure-fire solution at age 31 and shouldn’t be viewed as one, but the Titans got better Sunday. That alone was notable. It hasn’t happened much this offseason. Most notably, by neglecting wide receiver, they’d put themselves in a bind to where they had to do and pay whatever to win the chase and sign Hopkins.
That’s if they considered themselves a realistic contender in the AFC this season.
Evidently, they still do.
That’s the real lesson here.
Until Sunday’s news, I don’t know how anyone – Titans players included – could have been sure of such a belief from this team's leadership. This Titans offseason has been too strange, too erratic, too often emblematic of a franchise without a firm grasp on where it stands.
They haven't been rebuilding, necessarily. They signed Jeffery Simmons to a pricey extension. But they also sent Taylor Lewan, Robert Woods and others packing while trade rumors kept circulating about some of their best, veteran players. Ryan Tannehill, Derrick Henry and Kevin Byard – who was famously asked to take a pay cut – are still in Nashville, but for how much longer? How could anyone know?
Until now, the Titans had done next to nothing at wide receiver to help Tannehill or Henry, preferring instead to draft presumptive replacements for each in the second (Will Levis) and third (Tyjae Spears) rounds. Then they kept Tannehill and Henry (and Byard) and kept working toward the preseason as if nothing has changed.
If the Titans have lately appeared of two minds, that'd make sense. In Ran Carthon, they have a first-year GM who inherited a 7-10 team with salary-cap issues. Makes sense that he’d want to clear the books and tap a reset button. Most new GMs would.
They also have Mike Vrabel, though, a widely respected coach who has done a lot of winning in Tennessee with this culture and these core players. Surely, Vrabel wouldn’t wish to tear it down and stink on the field to gain draft picks that he might never get to make. No NFL coach would want that.
What we've been left with is a team that is approaching 2023 as a last hurrah for the declining, ground-and-pound Titans as we’ve known them. That has been the perception, anyway.
But then the Titans pay up to sign Hopkins.
And it looks a little different, doesn’t it? Maybe the Titans really are still pushing to win now. Maybe their window, presumed shut, is cracked just enough to do some damage in a mediocre AFC South in the hopes of staying healthy enough to have a fighting chance in the playoffs.
Don't say it can't happen. What too many league-wide are missing when they look at the Titans is how last season’s collapse can be pinned on injuries, a subpar offensive line, a struggling offensive coordinator in Todd Downing who wasn’t long for the job and the wholly unforced distraction of owner Amy Adams Strunk firing GM Jon Robinson with five games left in the season.
But Tannehill, when healthy, was still effective without much receiving help or pass protection.
Henry may have lost a step, but he still ran for 1,538 yards in spite of all that, too.
The Titans’ numbers on pass defense were terrible, but that had a little bit to do with the fact that teams couldn’t run on them. Their defense has questions, sure, but not as many as a few years ago. Offensively, it can’t be much worse than 2022, right?
Point being that it’s too soon yet to give up on these Titans.
It appears, finally, that they agree.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes.