GM Mike Borgonzi confirms suspicion about the Titans trading away Jarvis Brownlee Jr. in ‘controversial’ move

Tennessee Titans GM Mike Borgonzi met with local media on Wednesday, following the NFL trade deadline, to discuss the state of his roster. This was a rare solo appearance by the man in charge of Tennessee’s football team, and he absolutely crushed it. He protected the team while still sharing as much detail as he could in a series of highly thoughtful and earnest answers.

This is exactly what Titans fans are looking for from their struggling team, and the initial public reaction has been unanimously favorable.

Perhaps the most insightful thing he talked about was the first trade he made this season: the decision to move CB Jarvis Brownlee Jr. to the New York Jets for a sixth and seventh-round pick swap. He acknowledged the divisiveness of the move and explained in the most detailed way we have heard yet why he felt it was the best decision for the Titans.

Titans GM finally explains why the Titans traded Jarvis Brownlee Jr.

I try to always be as forthright as I can be as a writer and a speaker. However, there are times when we simply don’t have specific information, and even more often, there is only so much I can share. Ever since the Brownlee move was made, I’ve been of two minds on it.

As a football evaluator and outspoken fan of the way Brownlee plays ball, I hated the move and felt it was a fleecing by New York. I gave it a very poor grade for the Titans once the trade deadline concluded.

On the other hand, as a reporter, and in my capacity as the messenger on a situation that hadn’t been addressed in detail by the team until today, I understood why the team felt this was the right move for him. “He wasn’t a culture fit” was the general explanation I and others had to run with because that’s about as specific as the team had publicly been.

And so, while I still view it as a mark against this front office that they couldn’t make it work with a talented young player found late in the draft, I can at least understand their reasoning for making a decision they felt they had no choice but to make behind the scenes.

And so I’ve been explaining how this was a Monday-to-Saturday decision for the Titans, much more than a Sunday one. But you can no longer shoot the messenger because the team has now finally divulged some additional details that paint the picture for the public.

 “We are in constant evaluation mode here with players, with staff, and that comes — with players, it might be talent, it might scheme-fit. It might be culture-fit,” Borgonzi said. “The word culture gets thrown around there a lot. So what do you mean by that? Well, it’s the habits that we want to have with our players to create a winning culture here. It’s the team-first mentality, it’s the accountability piece, it’s the attention to detail piece. It’s their willingness to work and get better every day. So that’s what we’re looking for when we’re evaluating these players.”

This all laid the groundwork to touch on Brownlee, the first of his trades. He brought it up before anybody had a chance to question him on it.

“And I know the first trade we made with Jarvis Brownlee was — as I’m aware — it was controversial around here because he’s a young player that was ascending,” Borgonzi acknowledged. “You’re evaluating the fit, and without getting into a lot of details, I like Jarvis and I think he’s going to be a really good player in this league. We don’t have the culture right now sometimes to help guys develop right now. We thought at the time, just some of the habits weren’t conducive to building the culture right now. And I know that’s hard to understand because he’s a young player, and I wish Jarvis nothing but the best.”

This is the most detail we’ve gotten directly and publicly from the front office on its decision. It’s clarifying, if not in their wisdom to make the move, at least in the motivating factors. Borgonzi is wisely deploying a classic southern strategy here.

This is a textbook “bless their heart” approach. Everybody knows that you can say any difficult truth about a person if you just couch it with “but bless their heart.” And that’s what Borgonzi did a lot of on the topic of the Brownlee trade. He shared — some directly, some less so — the organization’s honest feeling on his tenure this season.

But he didn’t outright crush the guy, either. The details are here for those paying attention. When asked a follow-up about the traits they want to see from those that fit their culture, this is how Borgonzi explained it:

“Well, I think I touched on just the accountability piece, attention to detail, the willingness to get better every day. So I don’t want to specifically touch on that because Jarvis (Brownlee) is a great kid, and I wish nothing but success for him.”

He was also asked about the idea that this organization isn’t in a position to support every kind of player right now.

“That’s hard to explain sometimes with the culture in the locker room,” Borganzi said. “When you have a standard in the locker room at some point, when you’re winning a lot of games, when you bring a player in, they know exactly what they need to do, or they know they won’t be there very long. There’s a standard there.

“So we’re trying to create a standard. Sometimes that’s hard to articulate to people and the fans, but when you are in a locker room, you feel it. And when you’re around a winning team, you feel it. I certainly felt it in Kansas City, every person that we brought in there. They knew right away, if Pat (Mahomes) and (Travis) Kelce were out there practicing every day hard, I’d better be out there practicing every day hard. So we need to create that standard here, and we do have some pieces here.”