Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: NFL News; Reviewing Jon Robinson's 2017 offseason

Episode Date: February 12, 2019

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked On Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you today? Doing pretty good. What's up, man? Oh, actually, some stuff today. Yeah, what's up? I was about to talk about it. Some news pieces, so that's good. This time of year, you just never know. We can go a couple days with nothing and then a few things happen. So we'll talk about some new stuff and then we'll look at the 2017 offseason for john robinson before we do that remind you we're at from you see miracles.com we're going to titans for sb nation so you can

you find us there you can follow us on twitter i'm at jay morris mcm terry is at t lambert rtt apparently changed his twitter handle over the weekend so uh at t lambert rtt for terry and then you can get lots of basketball tweets. There you go. And you can get us, you can get the podcast, if you get your podcast, just search out LockedOnTitans. Also, if you want to play the podcast in your car or in your house, if you have a

smart speaker, you can just say, play podcast LockedOnTitans, and you will get us there. We also have a voicemail line where you can leave a voicemail, 615-787-8762. You can call in there, leave us a voicemail about a minute long. We've got, I think, three, so we'll do a show on Thursday. We can use a couple more.

So, by all means, if you have any comments on what we've been talking about or any questions or whatever, just call that number again, 615-787-8762, leave about a minute long message, and we'll get to it on the show on Thursday. All right, so something that was breaking yesterday, really, as we were just about done recording the podcast, the Browns signed Kareem Hunt. A little bit surprising, I think, that he got signed this early. A little bit surprising it was the Browns that signed him because they seem to have a pretty good uh core of young running backs uh nick chubb duke johnson both guys that have had some success nick

chubb really came on at the end of the year last year um but you got john dorsey there who's with the chiefs when they drafted kareem hunt so some familiarity there now i guess the thing that they're that you know they'll be waiting on we'll be waiting waiting on to see is how many games he gets suspended for the 2019 season. Yeah, it's interesting. I wasn't sure that he was going to land anywhere. I guess we probably should have known better because you kind of forget about the Joe Mixon deal at Oklahoma, a similar situation, and nobody seems to talk about that now.

Tyreek Hill had just an awful situation. You can go read about that. Just Google it. And nobody seems to talk about that either. So it's pretty clear if you're good enough, it really doesn't matter what you do at this point. You're going to find work. So it makes sense landing there with Dorsey.

You kind of feel for Nick Chubbb who I think is a pretty good player was really going to take control of that backfield now it's pretty cloudy but like you said there's going to be a suspension there just kind of interested to see the blowback in the coming weeks you know over social media we've seen a ton of it already. Kind of glad it's not the Titans. Not that we were expecting the Titans to make this move. Just kind of glad it's someone else.

Yeah, absolutely. Not the headache that we have to deal with. He's a good player, so I'm not extremely shocked that he got a job. Just kind of surprised that it happened this early. Another guy that's been in the news a lot lately, Antonio Brown, right before we came on today, posted a video on Twitter saying goodbye to Pittsburgh,

which is interesting because he's still under contract with the Steelers. He's requested a trade. I don't think that they have – I don't know if they've granted him that yet, if he can start looking for that or whatever's going on there. But, I mean, things have obviously gone really poorly there. I would be surprised at this point to see him back with the Steelers in 2019. But the problem is he just signed a new contract a couple years ago. And if the Steelers were to cut him, it's like $21 million in dead money against their cap.

So they're not going to cut him. They're going to have to find a team to trade him to. But then the problem is they're not going to get what he's actually worth because of the headaches that he's caused already, knowing he wants out and all that kind of stuff. So it's kind of an interesting deal for a guy that has been arguably the best receiver in the game for the last couple of years. Yeah, a couple of things there.

He's 31 years old, or will be, upcoming season. Going to make, what, $12 million, which is a lot for a receiver. Comes with some baggage with how he's handled things over the last few months. And definitely on the downside of his career. So you just start to wonder what are the Steelers going to get for him. We had talked previously about a one and a two. It wouldn't surprise me at all if you saw much lighter than that. It just seems like these NFL trades get done these days

for much less than what what average fan would think. So interested to see the market there, interested to see who's in. I don't think it's going to be a team like a top contender. I think you'll see someone like the Raiders or someone like that. Guys that tend to spend on free agency, the Redskins, someone like that. I just can't see a really smart front office getting in on that Antonio Brown sweepstakes. Yeah, it's just one of those tough deals where he's made it. It got so bad there.

I mean, Mike Tomlin talked about all the stuff that happened and then all this that's been going on. So, yeah, it's really hurt his value. And, yeah, I don't know. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Kyler Murray, another thing that was announced yesterday, has committed to football. You know, has told the A's that he's going to put all his energy towards playing football.

I mean, I think there's no doubt he'll be a first-round pick. Just how early he goes will be interesting. But he's a guy that Ian Rappaport tweeted out that has a little bit of power in this draft process, which you don't see from guys very often because he does have the baseball thing to fall back on. And so if there's a team that's going to pick him that he didn't want to go to, he can just tell them, you know what, I'm out. I'm going to go play baseball.

So I don't know if that's something that has entered his mind i mean i'm sure that people around him have had conversations like that uh but we haven't really seen anybody do that since eli manning and then you think like all the way back to bo jackson who sat out a year after the bucket years drafted him so um just kind of an interesting situation for him here, having power that guys generally don't have coming into the draft. Yeah, I think it's already become the story of this draft, with him announcing that football is where he wants to be, for the reasons that you already laid out.

He's getting the short quarterback treatment. The 5'11 quarterbacks always seem to get dinged. But I'm interested to see if that changes now. It just seems like the league has matured a little bit on that, and they're going a different direction with the all-in on offense deal that you're seeing today. So play a wide open spread offense at Oklahoma. That's a guy that probably you would be told wouldn't translate to the league five years ago, but now it's kind of what the NFL is looking for.

So they'd probably like him to be a little taller, but I'm interested to see how high he can go. I think for sure he ends up in the top ten picks. Yeah. I mean, somebody's going to fall in love with it, like you're saying, just with the way everything's going now. And so it'll be it'll just be interesting to see what happens there um all right a couple of news pieces that are i guess a little bit more relevant to the titans uh it was reported earlier today uh somebody if on network that the texans are expected to cut

demarius thomas uh you know they traded for him last year the deadline he was the guy that we had talked about as a particular trade target for the Titans, and then it was reported later on that the Titans did, I guess, kind of get involved in there with him, but they were a little bit late. The Texans got him. It didn't go very well. I mean, he had two touchdowns against the Titans, but didn't do much for the Texans even before the injury.

But now you've got a guy that's 30 31 years old whatever he is coming off of an achilles that's generally you know a full year 12 month recovery uh having been hurt in week 16 last year so no real surprise to see that move and i i don't know i think it's going to be kind of hard for him to find a team before this season starts. Yeah, another guy that's 31 years old, just like Antonio Brown, still not near the threat that Brown is. I think he's going to sit on the market for a little while. I think you're going to see him get a pretty cheap contract. It's still going to be a guy that fans are going to want to talk about

with the Titans, though, just being that the team doesn't have a veteran presence at receiver. You know, I don't hate the idea of bringing him in as a flyer if you do get that cheap contract. Depends on how much demand there is for him. But I think the Titans could do a lot worse there. I think they're going to start a little bit higher, but it wouldn't surprise me to see the Titans kind of kick the tires on him because they did so at the trade deadline.

Yeah, and so, again, I think for him it's just going to be all about how that recovery goes. So I'm sure teams will be keeping tabs on that, see how that goes. And then the last thing as far as news goes, there's a report earlier today that the Raiders are working on something. They don't have anywhere to play in 2019. They're done in Oakland. They're not moving to Vegas until 2020.

So there's been a lot of debate over where they're going to play their home games. In 2019, there was talk of San Francisco, but the 49ers have apparently blocked that because of the location or how close they are to them, whatever. Now there's this report today that there's some deal between uh tucson arizona and birmingham alabama and the raiders are going to kind of split time between those two stadiums as their home games this year titans play the raiders on the road this year wherever that ends up being so there's a possibility that you could have a titans versus raiders game in birmingham now that

that's an interesting thing because, one, I mean, I think if the Titans played the Raiders in Birmingham, the Raiders would sell more tickets to that game than if the Titans and the Raiders played in Tucson. However, I think you're going to have a lot more Titans fans in Birmingham than you would in Tucson. You've also got the whole Derrick Henry contingent, Alabama fans, that would be able to see him play in Birmingham,

just like an hour, hour and a half, whatever it is, from Tuscaloosa. So it would be interesting to see if that's what ends up playing out. It would be interesting to see what decision they make there because you're going to kind of have to decide between a home atmosphere versus how much money they're going to make on the game. Yeah, it kind of takes you back to the Titans in their little, I guess, two-year deal where they played at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis. They played at Commodore Stadium in Nashville. So it's just going to be a little odd if the Raiders do end up in Birmingham,

mainly because it's across the country. I don't know why UNLV didn't get involved in that, because UNLV has a college stadium just outside of Las Vegas. That would make the most sense to me. Obviously, there was some sort of hurdle there, but I'm not sure why that deal didn't get done. Yeah, that would make a lot more sense logistically. Like you said, the Titans played

a year in Memphis, a year in Vanderbilt, but they were playing all of their home games in the same place, even though it wasn't where they were headquartered. So this is just a weird deal. I can't imagine the Raiders are going to have a ton of success trying to juggle all that. But anyway, that'll be something to keep an eye on. Like you said, maybe

we'll have a Titans game three hours down the road from Nashville. Kind of an additional home game, so to speak. Alright, that'll do it for the new stuff for today. Coming up, we will get into the 2017 offseason John Robinson second as the general manager of the Titans.

Okay, so if you missed our discussion yesterday, yesterday we started with the 2016 offseason, which was obviously John Robinson's first as the GM of the Titans. And we went through the guys that they signed at free agency, the guys that they drafted and kind of evaluated that. 2017, I mean

you can evaluate a free agency class pretty easily. The draft class is still a little bit more unknown because you're only going into that third year with those guys. So it's not quite as easy to evaluate from that perspective. But this was an interesting free agency class for John Robinson. Logan Ryan was kind of the big ticket item that they got in this class.

And it was one of those deals where it was kind of like people thought they might have overpaid for Logan Ryan, but the Titans desperately needed help in the secondary. And obviously they drafted Dory Jackson in the first round, too. We'll get to that in a minute. But, you know, it was one of those deals where they basically had to sign somebody and draft somebody. And so that's what they were able to do. Logan Ryan was pretty good in his first year.

He was really good last year before he got hurt. I think he's a guy, again, we talked about guys that come in and change the culture, that type of stuff. He was a guy that came in and did that, and he's just been really good for this team, by all accounts, a leader in the secondary, all that stuff. So I think you have to mark this one down as a really good signing. Yeah, I remember the panic from that class. It started on Wednesday afternoon.

Titans didn't really do anything except for Matt Castle, Cyprian, and Kluge. Not real big signings. Titans had a ton of cap room and all these names were flying off the board. I forget who the big name corner was that year, but Titans didn't get him. I think Logan Ryan signed on Friday night at 10 o'clock. It was kind of under the radar.

Logan Ryan's been great for this team. Just solved a need. Kicked Bryce McCain out of that slot role and put Logan Ryan in there. He had been great. That's really the only signing from this class that really hit. The jury's still out on Jonathan Ciprian, who, you know, might have earned his contract in that one Chiefs playoff game, knocking Travis Kelsey out of the game. We'll see where they stand on him.

But all they really came out of with this class was Logan Ryan, and that's okay. Outside of that, it was just a bunch of band-aids. Sylvester Williams, we talked about Al Woods yesterday. Sylvester Williams was never a fit from day one. I remember saying that. I wrote it or something. Sylvester Williams was just not a nose tackle.

He's a one-gap penetrator. That's what he's always been. He just did not work, and he rarely found the field. Yeah, A.J. Bouye was the guy that was – That's right. The guy, yeah, that everybody was chasing in that, and he obviously ended up signing with the Jaguars. Yeah, and so then you look at – they signed those special teams guys, you know,

and I think that got them pretty early on. And, you know, how Titans Twitter goes when free agency starts happening. The Titans don't sign anybody. Everybody starts panicking. You had Brendan Trawick, Darren Bates, and Eric Weems. They signed special teamers, whatever. Those guys were fine in their roles. They gave Eric Weems touches on offense back in 2017.

That was really fun. But, yeah, Ciprian, like you said, I mean, just didn't – I don't know. He knocked Travis Kelsey out of that game. But I would have been interested to see how Dean Pease was planning on using him. I just didn't – Dickleboe kind of used Bayard and Ciprian interchangeably. That never made a lot of sense to me. But we'll see how that plays out this year. If Cyprian's back

or if they try to get McCarro, I don't think they're going to get both of them. That'll be something that's interesting to watch. Then you had Eric Decker, who signed later on in the spring and was a guy that I was actually pretty excited about. He had some good numbers.

The Titans needed a veteran receiver. And then he just kind of came in and was terrible. I mean, I don't know if he didn't want to be here or what the deal was, even like his role, whatever. But, you know, he was a guy that they brought in to kind of mentor the young receivers. And by most accounts, he wasn't really interested in doing that. He dropped a bunch of passes. So that was a guy that I thought, you know, maybe, hey, we got this late signing.

You know, maybe it's a guy that can pay off. And it just didn't really work. Yeah, you talk about stability with the receivers. That's all we want really here. We're not asking for much. And Decker was as steady as they came. I remember his time with the Jets. You know, everybody thought he was going to a bad offense.

He wasn't going to be involved. And all the guy did was just catch a touchdown a week. So he had that injury before he came here. I don't know if that played a role, but he clearly was the same guy. And then at the end, he just couldn't catch anything. That was just bizarre. I can't really fault John Robinson for going after a guy like that. Just a veteran guy that could work out of the slot.

The thinking was right there. I just think, like you said, he just seemed like he wasn't very focused. It just seemed like his playing days were behind him, and he was just kind of riding it out for a paycheck. Yeah, absolutely. That's not one of those where, like, when it happened, you're like, this doesn't make any sense. I mean, it absolutely did.

It was something that was low risk and had the potential to really pay off. It just didn't work out that way. Alright, coming up, we'll finish out with the 2017 draft class. Okay, so 2017 was the year where the Titans had two first-round picks. They had the first-round pick from the Rams from the trade from the year before.

So Corey Davis fifth overall and took Adoree Jackson 18th overall. You know, I think both of those guys have had their ups and downs. I mean, I think we'd be pretty happy with what we've gotten from Adoree Jackson with that pick and all that stuff at this point. The Corey Davis evaluation I think is tougher just because you because he missed a lot of time in that first year. The offense has been so up and down, so it's hard to really evaluate what you have in him. I think he's been really good in some games. There have been some games where they've really been able to lean on him.

I don't know that he's ever going to be top ten, top five receiver in the league, but I think he can be a really, really solid player for them. I think that's fine. Basically what happened there was there were three consensus guys that were going to the first round in this draft. It was Corey Davis, Mike Williams, and John Brown, right, from Washington? John Ross. John Ross.

John Ross. Okay, John Ross. And I think, you know, John Robinson looked at the landscape and realized that he wasn't going to be able to get any of those three guys at 18. And so he went ahead and took Corey Davis at five. You know, Mike Williams has had a big game or two, but I don't think, you know, it's really a big disappointment at this point that we have Davis instead of Mike Williams.

So, I mean, from that standpoint, they had to get a receiver. It makes sense. You know, some people are down on him because he's not a top-five receiver. He's a top-five pick. But I don't necessarily think that's really how you should look at it. The Corey Davis discussion, for me, goes back to Jamal Adams and Marshawn Lattimore, who the Titans were heavily involved with. All the mocks had basically Jamal Adams or Marshawn Lattimore back in 2017.

If you remember right, Corey Davis was on the fringe first round by the end of April. So you look at what Jamal Adams has done. He's awesome. He's pro ball safety. You look at what Marshawn Lattimore has done. He looks like he's one of the next great corners in the league. That's not to say that they should have taken one or the other, you know, like Jimmy just laid out.

All the receivers were going to be gone, and John Robinson basically said that. So I don't have a problem with getting your top-ranked guy there at five. Is it a little rich? Yeah, it probably is, but the Titans had such a need there. I still don't have a problem with it. And look, his best days are ahead of him. I mean, you look at what he's played in, missed all of training camp,

dealt with the hamstring injury his rookie year, played in offenses with a bang-up Marcus Mariota, played with Bl playing Gabbert. I just don't think this offense has really been Tailored to put up big numbers for a receiver. I think he took big steps forward this year I think he can take more steps forward next year Let's just hope Marcus Mariota is healthy and this new offense, you know keeps keeps the continuity around both of them so they don't have to restart from ground zero. Yeah, and then just to finish up on Adoree, I think the biggest surprise on him has been how bad he's been as a punt returner.

We talked a lot about that, about how you thought he'd be able to make an immediate impact in that way, but he struggled there and he's been pretty good as a corner. So that was a pretty good pick, it looks like, at this point. The Titans did not have a second-round pick. They had two third-round picks. It's a Taylor at 72 and John O'Smith at 100. I'm kind of out on Taylor. I need

to see something from him. Consistency, some kind of consistent like being able to get down the field and do some things. At this point, I don't know. I've just seen too many kind of red flag type deals from him. So we'll see if he can bounce back, offense, all that kind of stuff. Johnny was really coming on at the end of the year. It really stinks that he had the knee injury that kept him out

for the last quarter of the season. But I think that you at least saw enough promise in him last year that he's a guy that they can lean on as a number two behind Delaney Walker, at least for 2019 and kind of see where it goes from there. But, I mean, I think that was a pretty good value pick if he kind of continues on that same track that he was on before he got hurt. Yeah, and I'm not as out as you are on Taylor. I'm still kind of in. I just think he is what he is, and that's an occasional down-the-field threat,

a guy that you can get the ball out to and he can try and make something. I don't know that he's ever going to be a complete receiver. I don't think he's going to ever be a number two receiver. Maybe he can be a consistent guy that works out of the slot. I don't think he's lived up to his draft position at all. And like you were saying with Johnnie Smith, he was coming on. The athletic ability is clearly there. You saw that against Dallas when he caught the ball and ran for a touchdown.

Interested to see if he can take the next step. We've talked a lot about adding a tight end, and I think people are forgetting that John Newsmith was finally starting to gain some traction in the offense there. So I think it's a big camp for him, especially with Delaney Walker coming off of injury. Delaney's getting up there in age, so you want to see John News start to take those next steps forward

and see if he can eventually grow into a tight end one. Absolutely. And then the fifth round, they got Jayon Brown, who looks like still the draft at this point. He really, really came on in 2018. You know, looks like a piece they can really build around. So not a whole lot to say. A guy that's been a really good player for them,

took that big leap from year one to year two, being more than just a guy that they had on the field on third downs. And so if you can find a linebacker that can play two or maybe even three downs in the fifth round, that's a really good pick. Yeah, just took a guy based on traits, you know, had a lot of speed, going to be a coverage linebacker, basically a third-down player only when he was selected. And, man, has he grown into something a lot more.

So it looks like John Robinson picked up a potential all-pro-type player in the fifth round, which, you know, you do that in back-to-back years with Kevin Byard, now Jayon Brown. That's how you really start to build a roster. Yeah, and then they ended the draft out. They took Corey Levin in the sixth round, and then the seventh round that Terry still has nightmares about because of all the trades that John Robinson did

when he was trying to write it for Media City Miracles. They got Josh Carraway, Brad Seaton, Kalfani Muhammad. Muhammad, he didn't even make the roster out of that first camp, I don't think. The other two guys are long gone. You know, Levin's a guy they plugged in a couple times last year, played a little bit. But, you know, I mean, for a guy that's a six-round pick, I guess he's fine. You know, not a guy that they expect to be, you know,

somebody they're going to build their offensive line around. But, again, if you get a guy that's a six-round pick that can play for you in a pinch, that's a pretty good pick. Yeah, Levin's another guy with traits. You know, he's pretty athletic, playing left tackle at Chattanooga. Hadn't really worked out, but, you know, that's what you do in seventh round. You just kind of draft a guy on athleticism alone. Maybe he hasn't been on the right scheme or something like that.

But, yeah, I still think he's going to get another chance in camp. We'll see what happens with Ben Jones. As for the rest of them, yeah, I mean, Josh Carraway gave some decent reps in preseason, never really stuck around. Brad Seaton, I don't even remember seeing him take the field. And Muhammad, you know, they spent that last pick on. I think he got one or two carries in preseason, but, man,

he couldn't even find the field in the fourth quarter of those preseason games. So not a lot to write home about in that seventh round for sure. Yeah, so, I mean, you know, when evaluating this one, I think the free agency class was kind of whatever. Logan Ryan, obviously good. They didn't get much besides that that year. And I think there's still a lot of potential for this draft class. we think about we haven't seen the best core davis yet maybe even the same can be said for

dory jackson you got taewon and johnny who guys that still you know maybe have ceilings that they haven't reached yet so um you know again it gets a little bit tougher as you try to evaluate draft classes the closer you get because um you know you just've got to see them on the field. And so there's not a lot negative here, really. I think this was probably better than the draft before that, just like we talked about yesterday with the very second-round picks and how they didn't get a lot done there. But, again, you know, John Robinson has done some really good things. I don't think he had any really big misses here.

So I think it's more just some other needs that they haven't necessarily filled that have come up to bite them, not necessarily things they did wrong here. So anyway, that'll do it for today. We will be back either tomorrow or Thursday. We'll do a voicemail show. At some point we can talk a little bit about the 2018 offseason, and we can talk a little bit about free agency, the draft, and that kind of stuff.

But it's really hard to evaluate those guys just because you've just seen one year out of them. But after we do that, then we'll kind of wrap it up with kind of our just overall thoughts of what John Robinson has done here in his time as the GM. Between now and then, you can look for us at bcmiracles.com. Find us there. Follow us on Twitter at jmorrismcm, at tlambertrtt. Again, you can call in, leave us a voicemail. If you want to do that,

we will get that show going later on this week, 615-787-8762. Leave us a voicemail about a minute there, and we'll get to you later on in the show. For Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening, and we will talk to you again.