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Editorial


Front Page - Friday, January 31, 2025

Fewer free agents as Titans embrace rebuild




Chad Brinker, right, president of Tennessee Titans football operations, with new general manager Mike Borgonzi. - Photo by George Walker IV | AP

After trying to remain competitive during a rebuild that failed miserably, the Tennessee Titans are now embracing a full rebuild.

That’s probably was what should have been followed all along rather than selling fans on the notion that a first-time head coach, a first-time play-caller, first-time coordinators and second-year quarterback in a new system with lots of new free agent pickups would work.

It didn’t – to the tune of 3-14 and now holding the first pick in the NFL draft this April.

But looking back, there were simply too many things that would have had to go right, and virtually none of them did as the Titans plummeted to the bottom of the league.

Now, with Chad Brinker in charge of running the show and Mike Borgonzi coming in to be the general manager and restock the roster, the Titans are asking for patience.

That’s fine, and fans are probably willing to buy into that while a threadbare roster is replenished over the next couple of years.

But the one person who does matter in this rebuild is the only one that really matters as to whether it will be given a realistic chance to work – controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk. In the past three seasons, Strunk has sent two general managers and a head coach packing, even as her team has gotten worse each season.

“We’re all frustrated. And I know Amy is really frustrated. I mean, she doesn’t like this. She doesn’t,” Brinker says of the owner, to whom he now reports. “It’s just three years in a row a dignitary has been fired.”

Saying this as if he needs to convince Strunk to stay the course, Brinker went on to say, “How do you build a sustainable, elite franchise when you’re the constant changeover? She doesn’t want that. I know she doesn’t. We’ve talked through that. And what I do know and what I believe in is the draft-and-develop system.

“Everybody talks about it; it’s not an original thing,” he continues. “But do you really do it? Do you have the discipline to do those things, to say yes to these things? And we’re saying no to those things. We have to have the discipline and you have to have some patience around that. And she understands that. And she’s fully committed to this process. It will require some patience.”

Does she have that patience? Is she really committed to this process? That probably remains to be seen and could hinge on how much progress is made in 2025.

Best ability is availability

Brinker rightly says the Titans need playmakers. They don’t really have any. They also don’t have an adequate offensive line to hold up consistently enough to get the ball into any playmaker’s hands on a regular basis.

“We’re going to have build this team,” Brinker says. “We got to get playmakers on this roster. We don’t have enough playmakers right now. We’ve got to attack these premium positions with premium players. We’ve got to get the guys who can rush the passer. We’ve got to get the guys who can protect the passer. We’ve got to get the guys who catch the touchdowns.

“We’ve got to get the guys who can take the ball away. Like we got to get playmakers on this roster, and I believe that it all starts in the draft and that’s where you build the core of your roster.

“And then you can supplement in free agency with some of those gritty, tough guys that just are pros. And maybe they’re not the elite talent, but they’re just always available. They’re always there. They’re just good enough to kind of hang in there while you build the youth underneath as they come up through.”

Brinker is right, but he left off one important dynamic in the playmaker category – quarterback. Will Levis’ struggles last season are well chronicled, and the Titans might well move in a different direction there in 2025, though from the words coming from the front office last week, it sounds as if Levis will get a chance to compete to retain his starting spot.

That said, despite his struggles, how could a complete and fair evaluation be done of Levis – or any quarterback for that matter – when, as Brinker rightly notes, the roster is nearly devoid of any players who can change a game for the better?

“She understands this draft and developed the system. She sees the elite franchises of the league, like how can we become that?” Brinker says of the owner’s quest to turn the franchise around. “Well, this is how you do it if you want to be the Steelers or the Packers or the Ravens, and that’s what they do.

“They have their core beliefs and what they believe and they build their team a certain way. They have their principles they live by. I’ve talked about this before. You’ve got to have a vision, process and discipline. That’s the elite franchise of this league.”

Can success be imported?

Speaking of the elite franchises of the league, Borgonzi comes from Kansas City, which is about as elite as it gets going for an unprecedented Super Bowl three-peat.

While it would help if he had brought Patrick Mahomes and a couple of others with him, the Titans have to hope that some of the Chiefs’ success has rubbed off onto Borgonzi as he heads to Nashville after 16 years in KC.

To jump-start the suddenly patient process the Titans want to implement, Borgonzi says ideally he would like to have 30 draft picks over the next three seasons, and would like for at least 12 of those to be in the top 100 picks.

“It’s certainly possible, yeah, to do that. Like I said, we just have to have discipline in the draft as we’re going through the process,” Borgonzi says. “Draft picks are our biggest form of currency. So, when there’s opportunities to trade back, to collect more picks, we’re going to do that. So that’s always the goal, to try to get as many picks in the top 100 as you can.”

And with Amy Adams Strunk in charge, the goal is to show enough improvement and progress to be able to stick around and see the plan through.

Terry McCormick also covers the Titans for TitanInsider.com