Titans send clear signal on internal message by not trading away key assets at NFL trade deadline

All eyes were on the Tennessee Titans front office Tuesday, as the NFL's 3:00pm CST trade deadline loomed large for a team poised to sell. And the Titans did… nothing. The deadline came and went, and despite midday smoke from national reporters, Ran Carthon and Co. didn't close any deals. This report from Jeremy Fowler […]

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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Tennessee Titans General Manager Ran Carthon celebrates with Tennessee Titans cornerback Gabe Jeudy-Lally (32) after his team's overtime 20-17 win against the New England Patriots at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, Tenn., Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024.
© Denny Simmons / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

All eyes were on the Tennessee Titans front office Tuesday, as the NFL's 3:00pm CST trade deadline loomed large for a team poised to sell.

And the Titans did… nothing.

The deadline came and went, and despite midday smoke from national reporters, Ran Carthon and Co. didn't close any deals.

This report from Jeremy Fowler got many fans riled up, expecting to see a contending team swoop in and send Tennessee some nice draft capital in return for veterans on movable contracts.

But alas, nothing materialized. Just some inside-baseball, for what it's worth: these kinds of reports in the final hours before a deadline are often intentional fishing expeditions on the part of front offices. The Titans likely put this info out there to try to drum up some better offers on guys they would entertain moving at the right price.

Some players, however, weren't available to begin with. Diana Russini reported that teams calling to inquire about Jeffery Simmons already knew the answer before they picked up the phone: "No".

Plenty of fans are displeased with the Titans inability to move some more player capital for draft capital before the deadline. This is a team in a lost season, after all, and they've got some fat they could manage to trim. They have to make the future the focus!

Now, the Titans did make some "seller" moves, they just came in the weeks before the deadline. They most notably traded WR DeAndre Hopkins to the Chiefs for a conditional 2025 5th rounder, which becomes a 4th if he plays 60% of their snaps the rest of the year and the Chiefs win the Super Bowl.

Carthon also moved LB Ernest Jones to the Seahawks after trading for him from the Rams at the beginning of the year. The final math on that "flip" was a big win for the Titans, and it looked like this:

But why didn't the Titans go full fire sale mode? Why not trade every last movable asset to go all-on on the rebuild?

Put simply, the Titans made it clear on Tuesday that they value what their veterans bring to the team more than some future 6th round picks. Sure, they want and need as much future capital as they can get. But what a veteran like Arden Key or Sebastian Joseph-Day means to them on and off the field right now is worth more than that in their eyes.

There's a team culture to consider here. Brian Callahan and his staff have been hard at work since arriving in Tennessee to establish a strong culture and a cohesive message that players can buy-in on. And the pillars of any strong culture are often the veterans in the room.

Are guys like Key and Joseph-Day valuable on the field this year and likely next? Absolutely, and that's a big part of the equation too. These players are a part of their short-term plans. But the argument to move them now, of course, is that their on-field contributions aren't in the team's long-term plans, and that's why they should cash-in before it's too late.

That part is true. They aren't in the long-term plans for the team as players. But the intangibles they bring to the culture-building in that locker room are far from short-term; that's a lasting impact. And agree with them or not, Callahan and his staff see that as extremely important. At this stage in their season, they're paying almost as much attention to those things as they are the actual football.

Believe it or not, there's been a tangibly increased level of buy-in from some of these veterans in recent weeks. The result on the field has largely been bad, and at times, downright nightmarish. And yet, through all that turmoil, these players have stayed the course and further bought-in on what this staff is trying to do, what they're trying to build.

You can hear it in the way they talk to the media. The coaching staff sees it at work every day. They aren't wavering, and when they finally got over the hump with a second win in Week 9, you saw it in the way they responded.

Perhaps you think that's a bad reason not to move certain "tradable" players at the deadline. And you may be right. But to the Titans, to this staff working to build something lasting, having an Arden Key and a Sebastian Joseph-Day around for the short-term is worth more than a couple picks in the 200's.

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