COLUMN: Titans' Trade of A.J. Brown Was a Choice, and It Wasn't a Good One
NASHVILLE, Tenn. ⏤ No, it doesn't matter that Treylon Burks will bring the Tennessee Titans a similar skillset to what A.J. Brown gave them. No, it doesn't matter that they avoided paying Brown $25 million per season, which is what the Eagles are now on the books to do. No, it doesn't matter that, in […]
NASHVILLE, Tenn. ⏤ No, it doesn't matter that Treylon Burks will bring the Tennessee Titans a similar skillset to what A.J. Brown gave them.
No, it doesn't matter that they avoided paying Brown $25 million per season, which is what the Eagles are now on the books to do.
No, it doesn't matter that, in addition to saving money, the Titans nabbed an extra third-round draft pick that they later used as a bargaining chip for another trade with the Jets.
None of those consolations make up for general manager Jon Robinson and the Titans voluntarily sending a top-flight wide receiver to another team.
And that is, indeed, exactly what the Titans did: they chose to move on from Brown. No one forced them to do it, and, despite the way Robinson explained the situation on Thursday night, they absolutely could have kept Brown.
"We got to a spot where it was going to be kind of hard to get a deal done and the trade thing kind of manifested itself from them, really started working on that in the last 18-20 hours," Robinson said.
Robinson isn't correct. Getting a deal done would have been pretty easy, actually.
All it would've taken was calling Brown's agent and saying "yes, we will give him a four-year, $100 million contract." That's what Robinson should have done.
But Robinson made the decision to not make that phone call and, instead, made a call to ship Brown up north.
It's true that $25 million is a lot of money, and teams can't be expected to re-sign all of their talented players. Head coach Mike Vrabel pointed that out on Thursday.
"If we're going to be here a while, we're not going to be able to keep every single player that we draft and develop," Vrabel said.
He's right. Here's the problem, though: they absolutely should have kept this player, even at the price tag he demanded.
To believe otherwise would require also believing that Burks⏤the receiver Tennessee chose at pick No. 18, one of the two picks they acquired in the Brown trade⏤will 100%, no doubt replace Brown's talent and production for the Titans, and that's a massive mental leap to take.
Brown, for the Titans, was a sure thing. They knew what they had in him (a really, really good receiver), they knew how he fit with their offense (really, really well) and they knew how he connected with QB Ryan Tannehill (really, really well).
With Burks, all of those issues are question marks.
Burks is talented, sure, but he's no different than any other draft pick⏤far from a sure thing. Even for teams that consistently draft well, picks often amount to little more than a lottery ticket.
Granted, the odds on those tickets are relatively good in the first round, but Burks will have his work cut out for him if the Titans expect him to replace Brown.
And even if Burks does succeed, he's not going to be a 1-for-1 Brown replacement. He may profile similarly to Brown as an athlete, but he's not a clone.
"I would say just like, how our bodies are, they're similar, but we also have different things we bring to the table," Burks said of Brown.
The Titans wouldn't have had to worry about any of that, though, if they had done the sensible thing and paid Brown what he wanted.
Tennessee didn't even, technically, have to extend Brown. The team could have forced him to play out his rookie contract and given him the franchise tag in 2023, perhaps as a placeholder to get an extension down the road.
As far as an extension is concerned, with the salary cap expected to substantially increase over the next few seasons and the potential of moving on from big contracts like those of Bud Dupree, Ryan Tannehill and, yes, Derrick Henry, the Titans absolutely could have made a Brown extension work if they'd really wanted to.
They didn't want to, though, at least not enough. What's weird is that the Titans don't seem to understand that.
"I'm confident that we went to the extreme to keep A.J. here," Vrabel said.
No. The extreme would have been giving him exactly what he wanted.
The Titans, in actuality, inched close to their self-imposed boundary in their extension talks with Brown and chose not to extend that boundary.
And, for better or worse, they'll have to reap the consequences for some time.
Cover image: Christopher Hanewinckel/USA Today
