Mike Vrabel and Ran Carthon called their shot with DeAndre Hopkins signing
The Tennessee Titans were widely criticized for their early offseason strategies and the lack of wide receivers added to the roster during the initial free agent window and the 2023 NFL Draft. Tennessee lost Robert Woods in free agency to the Houston Texans while signing a 30-year old Chris Moore to a one-year contract worth […]
The Tennessee Titans were widely criticized for their early offseason strategies and the lack of wide receivers added to the roster during the initial free agent window and the 2023 NFL Draft.
Tennessee lost Robert Woods in free agency to the Houston Texans while signing a 30-year old Chris Moore to a one-year contract worth just over $1 million. In the ensuing April draft, Tennessee avoided selecting a wide receiver for the first 227 picks before landing on UT Martin's Colton Dowell in the seventh round at 228 overall.
To anyone looking at the Titans' depth chart after the draft, it was clear Tennessee did not have enough in the wide receiver room. It felt like the front office was refusing to address the team's most glaring need and was once again going to enter a season with a lackluster receiving corps.
That all changed with the team agreeing to a contract with free agent wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins on Sunday. Hopkins recorded 64 catches for 717 receiving yards and three touchdowns last season in just nine games for the Arizona Cardinals. Hopkins still has some dominant football in the tank. In signing him, Tennessee is not just getting help at receiver, but a bona fide number one.
The signing of Hopkins also marks the realization of a plan Mike Vrabel and Ran Carthon talked about immediately following the draft in April. The critics, myself included, were loudly questioning how serious this Titans regime was about winning in 2023, but Vrabel and Carthon called their shot amidst the noise. Here's what Vrabel told Titans media when asked if the Titans had done enough to improve at wide receiver in a post-draft press conference:
“Free agency is not over. They're going to let us sign free agents on Monday," said Vrabel. "They will. Free agency is going to go all the way up until the season starts. There will be players that are on other teams that will become available.”
Vrabel added that Assistant GM Chad Brinker and VP of Football Administration Vin Marino would be working diligently to free up salary cap space for future free agent options.
“Chad and Vin will help us with the salary cap and find ways to open up salaries so that we could potentially sign other players," Vrabel said. "There’s a pretty good process here and I’m excited about it."
"There's still a million more ways we can go about acquiring guys to help us, so we've just got to let this full process take shape," said GM Ran Carthon about the team's plan after the draft. "We don't have to have the roster at 53 until September, so we've got to continue to let this process go. We had free agency first. We started there, now it's draft season, and there's still players that are going to come available to us and it's just all apart of the process."
The "process" that both Vrabel and Carthon mentioned resulted in one of the top receivers in the game becoming available and falling into their lap at an affordable rate. You absolutely have to tip your cap to that execution by Tennessee.
The Titans nailed this signing, and frankly, they nailed this offseason when you consider how calculated and methodically they operated. There's obviously no guaranteeing that Tennessee will win the AFC South or make a playoff run this year, but considering the roster and cap situation Carthon inherited from Jon Robinson, he's done a really nice job of fielding a competitive team while simultaneously building for the future.
Breaking: Titans sign Pro Bowl WR DeAndre Hopkins
The Titans pulled off one of the biggest moves of the NFL offseason in signing WR DeAndre Hopkins.
