So loving these. I remember hearing Marv Levy say that the most important free agents were your own. Of course, that was during his brief tenure as G.M. under Ralph Wilson, and one of the reasons he quit was dealing with the parking lots on snowy days. I'm thinking Brandon Beane has enough resources to delegate that task to others!
While the skill players they added aren't that great I think the Titans are doing the right thing surrounding Levis with more weapons to see if he could be the QB of the future. Plus they had a lot of cap space to burn anyway and not many home-talent to sign in the next few years.
Hopkins/Ridley/Westbrooke/rookie?/the ghost of Treylon Burks is a better WR room than they had since the traded AJ Brown (a low bar that only the Patriots seems to be unable to clear, but still!) and Pollard + Spears is a decent-good combo even thought both backs skills overlap a little bit.
They're well positioned to select a good tackle in the draft + maybe another OL later on.
I am not even a Titans fan but to me it feels like they're doing okay/have a plan at least.
Teams like Jacksonville (what are they doing?), Chargers (what are they hoping for?) and above all the Panthers (let's give 20M/year for a good-not dominant guard but let's trade our best players because we don't want to pay them) are way more confusing to me.
Mind you, I do agree with you that the Titans are doing the right thing. And also with Mike, that it's a very unpromising 'right thing'. But placing a 1-year bet on Levis strikes me also as the least-bad bet they have on the table.
Hard for me to see how Pollard+Spears even approaches 'decent', never mind one bit 'good'. Unless you use the 'everyone wins a trophy!' definition of 'decent'.
Look, anyone who puts mayo in their coffee deserves to get sacked at least 8 times a game just on general principle.
I wish there were other professions where people could be described as “toolsy”. I want to be a toolsy librarian!
So loving these. I remember hearing Marv Levy say that the most important free agents were your own. Of course, that was during his brief tenure as G.M. under Ralph Wilson, and one of the reasons he quit was dealing with the parking lots on snowy days. I'm thinking Brandon Beane has enough resources to delegate that task to others!
Another great piece Mike, thanks!
While the skill players they added aren't that great I think the Titans are doing the right thing surrounding Levis with more weapons to see if he could be the QB of the future. Plus they had a lot of cap space to burn anyway and not many home-talent to sign in the next few years.
Hopkins/Ridley/Westbrooke/rookie?/the ghost of Treylon Burks is a better WR room than they had since the traded AJ Brown (a low bar that only the Patriots seems to be unable to clear, but still!) and Pollard + Spears is a decent-good combo even thought both backs skills overlap a little bit.
They're well positioned to select a good tackle in the draft + maybe another OL later on.
I am not even a Titans fan but to me it feels like they're doing okay/have a plan at least.
Teams like Jacksonville (what are they doing?), Chargers (what are they hoping for?) and above all the Panthers (let's give 20M/year for a good-not dominant guard but let's trade our best players because we don't want to pay them) are way more confusing to me.
Mind you, I do agree with you that the Titans are doing the right thing. And also with Mike, that it's a very unpromising 'right thing'. But placing a 1-year bet on Levis strikes me also as the least-bad bet they have on the table.
Hard for me to see how Pollard+Spears even approaches 'decent', never mind one bit 'good'. Unless you use the 'everyone wins a trophy!' definition of 'decent'.
Pollard was injured late 2022 and I think he wasn't 100% last year.
He's a average-okay back IMO and Spears showed a lot last year and is a good RB2.
I might be overrating them a bit but there's many backfields that are worse in the NFL right now. We shall see next year!
Keep up the good work, Mike