Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Titans Friday News: Robinson Speaks on Henry & Clowney, Rowland's Rant and Friday Mailbag!

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

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Welcome to the Locked on Titans podcast. I am your host, Tyler Rowland. Titans fans, today's Friday edition of the Locked on Titans podcast is brought to you by RockAuto.com. Amazing selection, reliably low prices, all of the parts your car will ever need. RockAuto.com. Today is Friday and how do we typically start out our Friday shows with a little bit of a Friday news dump for the Titans? And we have tons of smaller news stories, quotes here and there from Mike Vrabel or John Robinson, little stories here and there that I want to hit on. Little stories here and there that I want to hit on. So we are going to start out today's show there, going through all of the different news items that have popped up in about the last 48 to 24 hours. And of course, we have Derrick Henry's contract deadline next week. So I'm going to talk about that as part of our news.

We got some good quotes there. Also talking about the 2021 salary cap, which obviously impacts the Derrick Henry extension possibilities as well. And then throughout the week, we have been doing a 2021 look ahead. Just a small preview, not trying to get too crazy, but talked about what the financial situation could look like for the Titans next year with who will be a free agent, not just for the Titans, but around the NFL who could be cut to save cap space, different things like that. So we will round that out as well by talking about who is a guarantee to be on the

Titans schedule next year. So two divisions for sure. We are going to talk about those two divisions, talk about where those teams could be a year from now as well. And then to round out our show, I am going to give you guys a combo segment with a little bit of a Rollins rant on some of the new stipulations and protocol that the NFL have announced about the players and games and things like that this week. I'm just going to do a quick rant on how silly some of those things are, some things that NFL players have obviously talked about online as well. And then we will end our show with a few quick mailbag questions to finish out and head into

the weekend with a little bit of a Friday mailbag. Next week is the start of our ultimate division crossover training camp preview we are going to have all four hosts from the afc south on the podcast at one time i know a lot of you guys enjoyed that so we are going to bring that back to kind of get a complete review of the offseason for each team in the division and then a little bit of a preview, like I said, heading into training camp. Make sure that you don't miss those shows. We are back to five days a week next week, so I will be setting those up for you guys starting on Monday morning. Make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, following on Spotify, whatever

platform you do stream. Make sure that you're locked into the Locked on Titans podcast. And follow me on Twitter at TicTacTitans for any content schedules, additional updates, my film breakdowns, anything like that. But we have a lot to get into today. There is a lot of news to dive into. Round up our 2021 look ahead and then finish off the day with a little bit of a rant and some mailbag questions. Excited to dive into all of it with you guys. Let's get it.

Where I want to start off our Titans Friday news segment is a story that's going to be the backdrop for everything that we talk about going forward in today's news segment. So we will start with the 2021 salary cap. So just to let you guys know, back in May, Adam Schefter did tweet that the NFL expected a salary cap reduction next year of $30 to $80 million. Obviously, that's going to be a huge impact with the salary cap around $200 million right now. Typically, the salary cap goes up every year. It's inflation. It's just how it works.

And there's new TV deals and works. The new CBA was just negotiated. So nothing like this was expected, obviously. And the NFL is set to lose a ton of money due to all of the restrictions that come with COVID-19 and not having fans in the stands, not selling as much merchandise, not selling as much food, drink, everything that goes along with having less fans in the stands, all of the communities around. Obviously, you guys have thought about the impact as well. But basically, that's going to have a major impact on the 2021 salary cap,

which is going to have a major impact on how the Titans handle contract negotiations right now in this offseason. So something that we've heard about is a smoothing out of the salary cap. that we've heard about is a smoothing out of the salary cap so this is right now hopefully is only expected to really impact the NFL for 2021 you would hope that there's some sort of vaccine or some sort of immunity that we've built up over the course of two years to where this wouldn't really impact 2022 in the way that's impacting 2020 and will impact the 2021 financials. So the NFL could basically borrow from the salary cap, reduce the salary cap figure in 2023 and 2022, and push some of that money to 2021 so that the drop in salary cap isn't so steep. So in that circumstance, the players would be sacrificing available money in 2022 and 2023, but it would give them more money in 2021. Now, sometimes that's hard to do with players because there are players who are

going to be free agents in 2021, but there are a lot more players that are going to be free agents in 2022 and 2023. So those players who are going to be free agents don't want to take away from the pool of money that they'll have available just to give it to other guys who are going to have it in 2021. So you have to kind of make a decision there. It's a tough thing to do. We saw in the NBA in 2016, the players didn't decide to smooth out the salary cap. There was a huge spike in the other direction that this sort of philosophy could go, and that led to some weird contracts being signed and some teams making some mistakes. So you could see the opposite effect in the NFL if the players don't agree to do that,

and right now nothing like that has been agreed to. It doesn't seem to be something that they're actively working on right now, but it's something we could see. But right now, without knowing that, it's going to be hard for general managers and team personnel around the league to give out contract extensions this year because you really don't know what next year's cap could look like. John Robinson talked about that recently in an interview with Paul Kaharski, which he had a really good interview this week. I encourage you guys to check that out. But John Robinson had this

to say, I'm a big analogy guy. It's no different than if I was working for Pepsi or Coke and I knew we weren't going to have as many sales. You wouldn't go out and buy a new house. That makes a ton of sense, and Robinson continued. I don't know what it's going to look like. It's something that we certainly talk about. You know, we've talked to the players and the reps. There's a lot of uncertainty right now with everything, and I would say certainly with the salary cap too, because we've got to be mindful. What we don't want to do is do something, and then we've got to undo it or try to unpack it in a year, two years from now, given the uncertainty with the salary cap, end quote. And you think about Jonu Smith. You think about Jayon Brown. You think about Derrick Henry

even with less than a week to go. It's going to be difficult for the Titans to give out those extensions with the potential reduction in salary cap next year, especially for players like Johnnie Smith and Jayon Brown that I will admit, while they're very important players, I don't know if they're the type of players that I would risk putting myself in a bind next year. Derrick Henry's exempt from that conversation. We've seen what he can do for a team. And while I am very high on Jonu Smith and Jayon Brown is one of my favorite players on the entire team and one of the most underrated Titans, right now those just aren't the caliber

of players that you could possibly take the risk of giving big time extensions or over market extensions right now to make them happy and send a message in the locker room and then put yourself, like John Robinson said, in a situation where you've got to unpack those in a difficult spot one year or two years from now. And that brings us to our next news item, which is Derrick Henry's contract status, which his contract deadline of July the 15th is less than a week away now before he does have to play the 2020 season on that franchise tag for one year a little over 10 million dollars and

Robinson talked about that as well this week and one of the big quotes that stood out to me that he had to say was this quote anytime you're negotiating whether you're buying a house or a car or signing a player or whatever contracts there's going to be some back and forth with both sides. And you've got to kind of find where the player's happy and where it makes sense for the club. So you know we're still kind of working through that and we're down to what? A week? Yes, John Robinson, you are down to less than a week now. So it's going to be very interesting to see if the Titans are able to get any type of

contract done with Henry before that deadline of July the 15th. And that's why I talked about the salary cap story first, because that's going to be in the back of John Robinson's mind while he goes through these negotiations is what kind of salary cap am I going to be working with next year? How is this going to impact the team if we are put in a pretty difficult spot with the salary cap being reduced quite a bit and not having any kind of smoothing effect whatsoever so that's something that John Robinson is going to have to consider but it's also something that head coach Mike Vrabel will have to consider because he will have to deal with Derrick Henry

how he feels about things in the locker room how the other players feel about Derrick Henry, how he feels about things in the locker room, how the other players feel about Derrick Henry not getting a long-term contract in the locker room. And he also may have to deal with the potential of having a Tennessee Titans offense without Derrick Henry if they aren't able to get a deal done. And Derrick Henry does become an unrestricted free agent next year. But something that you should consider is rockauto.com. I don't know how else to express how amazing rockauto.com is other than telling you guys that you have just an incredible selection right at your fingertips at all times. You're not going to get bamboozled by a storefront chain place where not only do they change the prices based on whether you're a do-it-yourselfer or

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So check out rockauto.com. And while you're there, they do have a how did you hear about us box. Make sure that you write locked on in that how did you hear about us box so they know that locked on sent you and we would really appreciate it as well. Amazing selection, reliably low prices, all of the parts your car will ever need. RockAuto.com Titans Friday News Dump is running a little bit long, so I decided to split things up for you guys here, but we were talking about Mike Vrabel and him dealing with the repercussions that come

from not getting a long-term contract done with Derrick Henry. Mike Vrabel actually gave some quotes recently on the NFL Network show NFL Now, and Mike Vrabel had this to say about Derrick Henry. Quote, Derrick signed his franchise tender. He's under contract. I know that John Robinson and Vin Marino have been in contact with his reps. Having been involved with the NFL for a lot of years, getting deals done is about being patient, hopefully keeping them private and confidential.

So I'm going to try to respect that and understand that we love Derrick and how he understands how important he is to our football team. Again, his leadership that grew last year, I'm going to try to respect that and understand that we love Derek and how he understands how important he is to our football team. Again, his leadership that grew last year, I'm looking forward. I know our team is looking for more than that this year, end quote. So obviously Mike Rabel is still doing all of the politically correct things in the media, talking about how much he loves Derek Henry, how much he loves his leadership, how he's grown as a player and a leader. But while that is the right thing to say, I also think it's the true thing,

quite frankly, based on what we've seen from Derrick Henry. The next thing that we are going to talk about, the next news item to get into, is John Robinson talking about a couple of free agents. And of course, one of those is Jadavian Clowney. So let's have another crack at Clowney Watch 2020. Robinson spoke with as I mentioned before Paul Kaharski this week and he had this to say about Jadavion Clowney quote what I've seen on Twitter him rushing off the edge and hitting that bag anytime you're dealing with

whatever the contract is going to command you want to make sure that that player is healthy that you're able to allow your doctors to see him, to look at it, and to make sure everything is going to be good, end quote. And that's exactly what we've known this entire time about Clowney's situation and the Titans' approach to signing him is that they want to bring him in the building after our core muscle surgery this offseason. They want to have the Titans' doctors and Titans' personnel take a look at him and make sure that they clear everything. And then after that, I think the Titans could increase their offer sweeten it a little bit but until then it makes sense that the Titans are

too uncertain to be able to do that and obviously what John Robinson is referencing is that video that Clowney put on Twitter of him doing pass rush drills and yeah he looks great but that's against you know a trainer some bags and an open. That type of video, while encouraging, is not going to sway John Robinson into doing something silly and not getting Clowney into the building. But Robinson also had this to say about Jadavian Clowney and how he would fit into the Titans' defense. And this is the type of quote that lets you know that John Robinson's very serious about getting Clowney in here.

It's something that he's been thinking about and something that he's been salivating over, and Titans fans should as well. Quote, you've got Harold Landry, you've got Vic Beasley, you've got Clowney, hypothetically. And to your point, you've got Jeffrey Simmons, you've got Daquan Jones, who's got some power rush, you've got Kamalei Correa, who goes 100 miles an hour. You've got a lot of different pieces that you can move around. You've got athleticism with Landry, with Beasley, with Correa. You can drop those guys into coverage.

Send David Long, Rashawn Evans, Jayon Brown, whoever it might be. It gives you a lot of chess pieces in that game, end quote. That quote right there just gets me very excited for the Titans defense. Robinson makes a great point. And since he's the one assembling the roster and assembling the defense, it makes sense that he has a vision for what this defense could possibly do with all the athletes and speed out there that could be available to the Titans, and adding Clowney to that would be fantastic.

The lesser known or lesser worried about free agent that I've been pretty vocal about the Titans maybe kicking the tires on, and I say kicking the tires with a little bit of pun intended, is kicker Steven Gostowski, who played for the New England Patriots as one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history. He's coming off an injury to his hip from 2019 that led him to be cut from the Patriots, but the Titans do have Greg Joseph as the incumbent right now. They have Tucker McCann coming in as an undrafted free agent from Missouri at this moment in time. While Greg Joseph showed some signs, it makes sense that the Titans would maybe want to bring in at least a veteran to compete and push Greg Joseph a little bit,

even if Joseph ends up winning the job. And Robinson talked about a potential addition of Steven Gostowski to the Titans roster, and he had this to say, quote, we certainly have confidence in Greg Joseph. I thought Greg did a great job for us, came in there at the end of last year and did a great job for us and helped us. It'd be his job to lose, but we want as competitive a position there as possible. Gostowski is another guy who we'd have come in and check, but yeah, absolutely, we consider him, end quote quote while Greg Joseph was perfect on his extra points 18 for 18 9 in the regular season 9 in the playoffs and 1 for 1 on his lone field goal in the season in the playoffs against the Chiefs I still think bringing in a veteran to at least compete would be the smartest decision and maybe Robinson would do the same once he has the possibility

again of bringing in a player to the Titans facility and having him checked out so that is the last bit of news that I want to cover right now there was a little bit of a video of Malcolm Butler going head-to-head against Kalief Raymond but you guys should just go check that out there's not much for me to talk about Malcolm Butler just shutting down Kalief Raymond which should be the case for how highly paid Malcolm Butler is. Speaking of that, Malcolm Butler was put on a list of most overpaid players in the NFL. He came in at third place overall. I think that's absolutely ridiculous, so I don't want to spend too much time on those little news items, but did want to mention them. Before we jump into our last segment of the week I got a little bit of a

Rollins rant for you guys talking about some of the things that the NFL announced recently about post-game interactions and then I also have a few questions to answer in our Friday mailbag so feel free to send in any questions anytime to me on Twitter, at TicTacTitans for each Friday mailbag. We should have another one next week as our Ultimate Division crossover is expected to be four days, Monday through Thursday, and then it'll be just me back with you guys on Fridays as we enjoy. So we will round off the week's shows next. Next. So let's finish off our week with a little bit of a Rollins rant.

And like I said, I wanted to talk to you guys about some silly stuff that we have been seeing here from the NFL in recent days. So what the NFL did was they announced some procedures, some protocols, some rules, quite frankly, for players in post-game interactions, things like that. And one of the things that the NFL came out and said is that post-game, after the game, NFL teams, players, and coaches, all the like, are not allowed to interact with each other unless they are six feet apart. And things like jersey exchanges between players are not going to be allowed in 2020. Some other things that we're hearing, fans aren't going to be allowed to sit on the field.

That makes a lot of sense. Teams have to travel to the stadium on a bus together. They can't drive themselves to the stadium, even if they're the home team. And there will be no media, no media in the locker rooms this season. Okay, the last three teams traveling on a bus, no fans on the field, media out of the locker room. I mean, all of that makes a lot of sense. But you're telling me that players, the players on the field in the game, can't be within six feet of each other once the whistle blows for the final stretch of the game? The clock's hit zero and now the players have to all of a sudden run six feet away from each other after literally tackling each other, blocking each other, covering each other, running with each other

for the last 60 minutes? That doesn't make any sense at all. I understand that the NFL is trying to take every precaution necessary. The NFL is trying their best to make things as safe as possible, necessary. The NFL is trying their best to make things as safe as possible, but it really just doesn't make any sense to have these limited interactions between the players while simultaneously putting them out there to play football. I'm not saying have no precautions, but they can't swap jerseys. They can't be within six feet of each other once the whistle blows. It just, I guess it, like I mentioned, it just seems silly. It just seems completely silly.

And we've seen a lot of players take to Twitter and take to the internet to voice their, I don't want to say shock because it doesn't seem shocking. It's not outrageous. It's not outrage, I guess I should say. But the best word for it is just silly. And the players have been expressing that. Taylor LeJuan said, oh, so we're making zero sense now. Kenny Vaccaro said, but we can tackle each other?

Come on now. So we've seen some Titans even say how silly and dumb that these player protocols are going forward. You can't ask these guys to go out and play football against each other every Sunday in practice and then tell them they can't be within six feet of each other directly after the whistle blows. It just doesn't make a lot of sense, quite frankly. So I just wanted to give you guys a quick rant about that. It's something that a lot of people have been kind of just laughing at

throughout the last few days since it was announced. But now I want to get into a couple of mailbag questions. Really haven't had a lot of mailbag activity lately, so understandable from your guys' perspective. It's been a slow time during the season, but we did get a few mailbag questions in this week, and I want to make sure that I answer those for you guys. So the first question comes from Josh Merbitz, and he said, what are the chances we sign

Derrick Henry to a long-term deal by the deadline July 15th? Josh, it's something obviously I led off the show with talking about the complications now. It would be difficult enough to sign a running back like Derrick Henry to a second contract based on all of the negative examples we have of what happens when you sign a big-time running back to a big-time contract in his second contract after his rookie deal is up. So that would make it complicated enough, but then you add in all of the impacts that COVID

could have on the salary cap, and I've soured on my percentage. So I'm going to say 25% chance that the Titans sign Derrick Henry to a longer-term deal by the deadline next week. But obviously next week, we are going to be monitoring that situation. While we are going to have the that situation. While we are going to have the ultimate division crossover, it's definitely something that I'm going to make sure to get into the show and make sure that we mention, even if it's an emergency podcast, I do on Tuesday night as we approach the deadline on Wednesday. Next question we have here is from

Rob Kelly. He said, it's crazy how much I love Rabel, but can't stand some of his decision making. Maybe add this to the Friday mailbag. You got your wish. Do you think the questionable decision making came from a we have to win mentality? Because it seemed like the bad fake stopped once we started winning. Okay, I get what you're saying there. You're saying that early on in the season, Vrabel was making questionable decisions in the game, going for it against Jacksonville was one,

not going for it against Atlanta one time, I believe, or not going for it against Buffalo. Yes, is what I criticized quite a bit because we were missing so many kicks and Vrabel just continued to send Cairo Santos out there to miss kicks. So I think that early on in the season, there was a little bit of desperation from Mike Vrabel that maybe contributed to some of the more poor decision-making that we saw.

I understand where you're coming from there, but my concern about Vrabel all along, and let me be clear, I love Mike Vrabel. I think he's a fantastic coach. I love him as the coach for the Titans. But he's not a perfect coach, and I think one of his shortcomings is in-game decision making. And whether to go for it, whether or not to go for it, when to fake, things like that. I think he'll gain experience. He still was only a second year coach. But as I've mentioned on the show before, I think he thinks a little bit too much like

a player. So it's a player's mentality, not a we have to win mentality that I would blame on some of the more mind numbing decisions that we've seen him make. I think that sometimes he gets caught up in the game and wants to be a player. He wants to have confidence in his players, like with Cairo Santos missing all those kicks against Buffalo. He had a player's mentality of, of no the player will figure it out have confidence in the player and he'll get it done blah blah blah blah going for it on a fourth and six in the red zone against the Jaguars when the offense has been absolutely putrid all game he just believes in

players and thinks the players are going to work it out. A coach is more critical. A coach is more pessimistic about what the players are able to do. They think more analytically about the situation. Mike Vrabel at points in times, in my opinion, can still think like a player. And that's the mentality that causes him to make some bad decisions in game. But overall, Vrabel is a great coach. So I don't want to act like I'm hating too hard on him in this situation and then the final question comes from my boy Tony Carson what's up Tony my dude he said where do you see us finishing not only in the division but in the league as well I think next year it's more likely that the Titans go 10 and 6 11 and 5 I think the Titans

finally do win the division based on the Jaguars being so bad. I'm not high on Phillip Rivers as the quarterback of the Colts, and I think that Bill O'Brien has actively made the Texans worse, and if they start off the season slow, that locker room could implode a little bit on Bill O'Brien, and he could not be the coach of the Texans by this time next year. So that is where I see the Titans finishing tops in the division. And I think that they won't have the top seed. They probably won't have the two seed, but I could see the Titans at three or four seed in the AFC overall and in the NFL being a top eight to nine team record-wise, at least winning percentage-wise going forward. But that is going to do it for today's show.

We got in a mailbag. We got in a Rollins rant. We got in all of the news. I pushed the 2021 division schedule kind of out of here. I felt like the news was a little bit more. I'll let you guys know right now that the divisions that the Titans have to play in 2021 are the AFC East and the NFC West. So felt like the news that we had to cover for the news items, the Friday news dump was a little bit more pertinent, a little bit more important for us to talk about. So kind of filled that slot and made it two segments for you guys there. But like

I said, that is going to do it for our show today. Make sure to tell your smart device to play the Locked On Fantasy Football Podcast now that you are done with this episode of the Locked On Titans Podcast. They are talking about best ball drafts. They are talking about auction drafts, getting you guys ready to go, ranking the rookies, talking about movement up and down, ADP changes that they're seeing from some of these early leagues. Never a bad time to get ready for fantasy and dive into all of that information to be as prepared as possible once the season does kick off in September. But like I said, that is going to do it for me. That is going to do it for this week. We are going to be back with the Ultimate Division crossover next week.

So excited to bring that to you guys as well. As always, I am your host, Tyler Rowland, and this was Locked on Titans.