The Tennessee Titans made arguably the biggest splash of the NFL trade deadline when they sent defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons to Chicago for multiple first-round picks.

But general manager Mike Borgonzi wasn’t quite done before the deadline passed Tuesday afternoon.

With just hours left, Tennessee sent veteran safety Amani Hooker, who joined the Titans in the same 2019 draft class as Simmons, and a 2027 fifth-round pick to the Buffalo Bills in exchange for Buffalo’s 2027 second-round pick.

That is a fantastic return! This trade gets a hell yeah from me. Borgonzi did a great job maximizing the value of a veteran piece at the absolute peak of his market. Here’s why, and where the Titans go from here:

Why the Titans sold Amani Hooker at the peak of his market

Start with the other side of the deal. The Bills have had a desperate need in their secondary for quite some time, and Hooker was a gettable, useful option to upgrade that roster. Buffalo has one of the best offenses in the league and a defense that simply needs to stay out of its way in the playoffs, especially on the back end. So it makes sense for the Bills to overspend to push their chips in on a championship run.

Now for Tennessee’s part. Hooker was playing on his third contract, and I believe it was the first extension Borgonzi handed out as the Titans’ GM. That summer before the 2025 season, Hooker signed a three-year, $40.5 million extension, giving Tennessee roster control this season and the next two.

But ever since his original running mate Kevin Byard was traded to Philadelphia in the middle of the 2023 season, Hooker mostly underwhelmed based on our expectations for him! For the past couple of seasons, we’ve talked about him as a guy who wasn’t making the kind of impact a veteran paid that highly should make.

This season told a slightly different story, one that got turbocharged the past couple of weeks. Hooker has played much better on the whole, and the Bengals game put an exclamation point on it. He recorded a hat trick of interceptions on Joe Burrow, which gave him a league-leading 5 on the season and 17 in his eight NFL seasons total. His stock was suddenly trending up in a way it hadn’t for years.

Moving off of him does raise some serious questions at safety for the rest of this season. Veteran Tony Adams is still around, and second-year safety Kevin Winston Jr. needs to step up in a big way now. It will be difficult for this defense to eat that loss. It’s a give and a take, though, because it also means more snaps for players who might be a bigger part of this team’s future. And head coach Robert Saleh was brought in to figure things out defensively. He’s been in situations like this before, and frankly, it’s his job.

As I said on Monday’s episode of the A to Z Sports Morning Show, if you get an offer in that territory, you have to say yes. Hooker’s timeline for contention and the Titans’ timeline just don’t align anymore. Similar to Simmons, they’re increasingly out of step.

The NFL is running out of players

I think it’s wise for the Titans to keep turning fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-round picks into picks in the first four rounds, ideally on Day 1 and Day 2. It’s not some revelatory idea that those picks are where you find the best players. But in the age of NIL, and with college football still feeling the repercussions of the COVID years, a behind-the-scenes talking point has started to break into public discourse: the NFL is running out of players!

It’s a half-joking narrative online, but there’s real substance behind it. Many of the players coming out late in the draft, choosing not to stay in school and make money, carry what we’d traditionally consider UDFA grades rather than draftable ones. You hear stories of teams running out of draftable players on their boards by the fifth, sixth, and seventh rounds much faster in recent years than before.

On a traditional trade chart, a second-round pick with a fifth-round kickback might look like the value of a third. In this specific moment, basically turning a fifth into a second to offload Hooker is an even bigger win than it would have been a few years ago.

What the Titans’ draft capital looks like now

This upcoming draft is going to be massive, whether Tennessee is still building around Cam Ward as the definitive future of this franchise or not. In 2027, the Titans now have two first-round picks and two second-round picks. That’s five picks in the top 100 and seven in the first four rounds, the most they’ve had in a good long time.

In 2028, they’ll have four picks in the top 100. That adds up to nine top-100 picks and 12 picks in the first four rounds across the next two drafts. That’s the kind of reset package that should allow Tennessee to either adjust to life after Ward or build a young nucleus around him. There’s a lot on Borgonzi’s plate now, because you have to hit on these picks. But it’s huge for the Titans.

In the next two Drafts, the Titans are loaded:

4 first rounders
3 second rounders
2 third rounders
3 fourth rounders

That’s NINE top-100 picks and TWELVE picks in the first four rounds.

A Draft+Develop reset war-chest.

— Easton Freeze (@eastonfreeze) November 10, 2026

One last tidbit: with Hooker and Simmons both gone from that 2019 class, long snapper Morgan Cox remains reigning champion of longest-tenured Titan: he’s been here since 2021. The next longest-tenured Titan not named Morgan Cox is running back Julius Chestnut, who signed as an undrafted free agent in May of 2022 and is five years and counting with the team. That’s your new non-long-snapping old head.