Tennessee Titans Mock Offseason 1.0: Restructures, free agent signing predictions, mock draft, and extensions

Mike Borgonzi’s second player acquisition cycle must be a successful one. Here’s how we would approach it.

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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Nov 30, 2025; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Cleveland Browns tight end David Njoku (85) warms up before the game against the San Francisco 49ers at Huntington Bank Field. Mandatory Credit: Scott Galvin-Imagn Images

The NFL Combine is a little over a week away. The legal tampering period of Free Agency opens a little over a week after that. Three weeks after that are the annual owners meetings in Arizona, and then three weeks after that is the opening night of the NFL Draft.

You didn’t think football was over, did you?

With over $100 million in cap space to spend and a war chest of draft picks to make, this is a pivotal offseason for Tennessee Titans GM Mike Borgonzi. There’s plenty of room to make dramatic improvements to a roster that sorely needs help, but that means there’s also room to make some disastrous decisions as well.

On the A to Z Sports Morning Show last week, we used sticktothemodel.com’s GM tool to mock the entire Titans offseason with live help from our audience. It was a fun exercise that, while imperfect, is a good way to demonstrate some of the guiding principles of free agency and the draft for this football team. You can watch the full show right here for in-depth analysis behind each individual player decision.

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Here’s a summary of of the moves that we made with big-picture notes on why:

Mock Tennessee Titans Offseason

Cuts

  • CB L’Jarius Sneed (+$11.9M)

The Titans roster has a lot of holes and they already have more cap space than they know what to do with, so they don’t have much fat to trim. There is just one significant contract that is a cut-and-dry case for being cut, and that’s veteran CB L’Jarius Sneed. Injuries completely tanked his time in Tennessee after they traded a third round pick for the opportunity to hand him a massive contract two years ago. He’s done playing for the Titans, and honestly might be done playing football altogether for all I know.

Extensions

  • Jeffery Simmons, 3 years (+$9.7M)

Jeffery Simmons is the only contract that is a lock for an extension. The only super star on this team, Simmons is coming off of his best season yet without any guaranteed money left on his contract. His camp will surely be looking to leverage the figure he has become both on and off the field for this franchise, and Titans brass will be looking to make an example of him to the rest of the league: “look, we treat out own the right way.”

LG Peter Skoronski is the only other player we considered extending. He’s entering the fourth year of his rookie contract, and the Titans will have to decide this spring whether to pick up his fifth year option. He’s another player the Titans can make an example out of as rare homegrown talent on this squad. They can extend him whenever, and I expect them to eventually. The sooner, the cheaper. My gut says he’s a deal that gets done later this year.

Trades

  • QB Will Levis, 2026 7th to MIN for 2026 5th

The future for Will Levis is unclear. He is healthy again after his late-summer shoulder surgery last season, and if the Titans can find a suitor in this barren QB market to trade for him, I know that all parties involved would be pleased with that. We chose to send him to the Vikings for a modest pick swap. His market value is so hard to gauge now that a whole season has passed since we last saw him. I wrote about his situation in greater detail right here.

Re-Signings

  • OT Oli Udoh, 2yr/$25 million
  • EDGE Jihad Ward, 2yr/$15.4 million
  • K Joey Slye, 2yr/$8.8 million
  • DL Sebastian Joseph-Day, 1yr/$6.5 million
  • C Corey Levin, 1yr/$3.1 million
  • LS Morgan Cox, 1yr/$1.2 million
  • DL James Lynch, 1yr/$1.1 million
  • WR Bryce Oliver, 1yr/$1 million
  • WR James Proche, 1yr/$1 million

It won’t shock you to learn that the Titans don’t have a ton of fat contracts to hand out to pending free agents already on this team. But there are some talented pieces worth keeping, such as swing tackle Oli Udoh. He was at risk of being taken on waivers or traded for all of last season as the Titans did roster gymnastics with their OL depth. I don’t actually think he will cost quite as much as we had to pay him in this simulator, but I don’t think he’ll be an easy guy to keep for cheap either.

A good rule of thumb for this Borgonzi front office: do not underestimate their dedication to being rock solid in the trenches. Every team claims it’s all about your big men, but Borgonzi wants to actually live it. Whether it’s Udoh or someone else along the line, don’t be surprised if they dedicate more resources to those positions that you might expect. Bringing back DL Sebastian Joseph-Day and EDGE Jihad Ward is a part of that too.

Free Agency Additions

  • WR Jalen Nailor, 3yr/$37.5 million
  • TE David Njoku, 3yr/$30.9 million
  • DL John Franklin-Myers, 2yr/$20.6 million
  • CB Joshua Williams, 2yr/$20.4 million
  • CB Alontae Taylor, 2yr/$20 million
  • IOL Alijah Vera-Tucker, 2yr/$16.6 million
  • TE Daniel Bellinger, 2yr/$13 million
  • EDGE Yetur Gross-Matos, 2yr/$10 million
  • QB Gardner Minshew, 2yr/$10 million
  • LB Garret Wallow, 2yr/$5.2 million
  • IOL Dylan Parham, 2yr/$4.6 million
  • S Jason Pinnock, 1yr/$2 million

If I have one regret from this exercise that we did in real time on the morning show, it’s that when I looked up after our free agency haul, I’m not sure we did as much as the Titans will end up doing. If this list isn’t exactly inspiring you, I get it. But frankly, that was our point.

Yes, the Titans have the most money in the league to spend in free agency this season. But the heart of what we were trying to do here is show how free agency needs to be used to supplement the roster, not build it’s foundation. The draft is where you make or break your team. Mike Borgonzi isn’t setting out to “win” free agency, so while they may make a splashier signing or two than we did here, I think this list is more realistic than the lists people have put together with multiple top-of-market deals. But we will see!

I also want to emphasize the fact that if there’s a player set to hit free agency that you really badly want to land, odds are they won’t ever reach free agency. That’s just how this tends to go.

We emphasized non-premium positions here, and set the floor at premium ones like CB and EDGE. Then we moved to the draft to take premium swings.

Mock Draft

Round 1, pick 4: EDGE David Bailey, Texas Tech

  • Historically, it is here where you must take a star EDGE rusher if you want one. There are options in this draft class, and the Titans select the man with the most wicked first step we’ve seen in years. Bailey helps this pass rush big time.

Round 2, pick 42: WR Omar Cooper Jr, Indiana

  • Personal rule: once the NFL Combine is behind us and we absorb all of the intel that flows from Indianapolis at the end of February, strict mock draft wishful thinking law applies. Was Omar Cooper Jr. available at 42 in this mock (after trading down from 35)? He was, and a well-rounded receiver like him is exactly who the Titans need. Is there any indication right now that he will fall into the 40’s? No. But one can dream, especially before the dust settles on the Combine chatter.

Round 3, pick 66: CB Julian Neal, Arkansas

  • EDGE, WR, and CB. These are the premium positions the Titans have screaming needs at. Neal in the third round is exactly the kind of CB option Tennessee is hoping they have available to them. At 6’1″ 202lbs, he has the explosiveness and athleticism to match his size that this front office prefers.

Round 3, pick 73: CB Malik Muhammad, Texas

  • We were strong proponents of the power of the double-down in this draft. Longhorns star Malik Muhammad is who we tapped to pair with Neal as a rookie CB duo. They’ll push one another as potential early contributors.

Round 4, pick 101: IOL Logan Jones, Iowa

  • The beginning of Day 3 brings us back around to the idea that the Titans want to keep investing in OL. Jones won the Rimington Award in 2025 and was the leader of the Joe Moore Award-winning offensive line at Iowa. He has four years of starting experience in college that sets him up to transition well to the NFL.

Round 4, pick 140: RB Mike Washington Jr, Arkansas

  • The Titans have three running backs under contract, but Pollard and Spears’ futures are completely up in the air beyond 2026. Reloading with young talent would be wise, and Mike Washington was one of the most efficient runners in college football last year.

Round 5, pick 142: OT Dametrious Crownover, Texas A&M

  • More offensive line help, this time in the hulking form of 6’7″ 330lb Dametrious Crownover. He has the physical tools to win at tackle in the NFL, and his athleticism at his size is adequate. If he polishes his game in the right system, he could start one day.

Round 5, pick 161: WR Bryce Lance, North Dakota State

  • Brother of NFL QB Trey Lance, Bryce is a rare WR specimen to find on Day 3 in the draft. He’s 6’3″ 209lbs, and he was uber productive his final year at NDSU. He’ll need to polish his game and adjust to the leap in competition coming from a smaller school, but his tools will work in the pros.

Round 6, pick 183: TE Sam Roush, Stanford

  • Our final pick was a swing at a tight end with attractive traits. Roush is 6’6″ 259lbs with all the athleticism you could ask for on Day 3, he’s just not polished or consistent enough to be drafted higher. He’s a developmental pick.

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