Titans’ hunt for wide receiver help in Free Agency could be steered by OC Brian Daboll’s recent experience with a top candidate

Free agency is a tricky place to find WR help, but the Titans might lean on familiarity with new coaching staff to land a winner.

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
Add as preferred source on Google

Wide receiver is one of three premium positions the Tennessee Titans desperately need to address this offseason.

The rookie seasons of Chimere Dike and Elic Ayomanor were ultimately promising for two Day 3 rookies thrown into the fire early on, but Cam Ward needs an alpha to throw to. Luckily for Titans fans, they have a league-high amount of cap space and a healthy war chest of draft picks to throw at their problems. Unluckily for Titans fans, though, is that multiple premium positions are really hard to fix in one offseason. And as badly as this team could use an upgrade at receiver, they objectively need help at EDGE and CB more.

I wrote a primer on the biggest overarching question GM Mike Borgonzi is going to answer for us this Spring: How do you walk the tightrope of being a draft-and-develop team with a metric ton of cash to spend in free agency and a roster that needs a lot of love? It’s a tricky balance to maintain, and I explored why in the article linked here.

None of that will stop Titans fans from clamoring for the attractive household names on the market anyways. And with so much money to spend and such a glaring need to fill, the Titans front office will at the very least be considering these options themselves. Knowing what Mike Borgonzi and Chad Brinker have so emphatically preached for the past year, I find it hard to believe they will be doing anything like Ran Carthon changing course and handing Calvin Ridley a surprise monster contract in the spring of 2024. But one potential free agent has an established history with OC Brian Daboll, and that familiarity could be the difference maker in the Titans pulling the trigger on a big ticket item.

Why Wan’Dale Robinson could be a Titans option in free agency

Daboll was a part of drafting and developing Wan’Dale Robinson in New York, and the young receiver is coming off of a career year. He posted a personal best 1014 yards on 140 targets with 4 touchdowns. When the Giants lost Malik Nabers, Robinson became their guy. At 5’8 and 185lbs, he’s certainly a slot-oriented player. But he took over 400 of his 977 total snaps last season lined up out wide, proving he has the versatility that’s basically a requirement in today’s NFL.

Both the Giants and the Titans have undergone wholesale coaching changes this offseason, and that always raises big questions about who will and won’t be brought back on the roster. Robinson is the kind of talent that feels like he’s right on that line between likely and unlikely to reach the market. Early chatter from New York media seems to indicate he’s more likely to be brought back by GM Joe Schoen than not, but he’s not John Harbaugh’s guy. So who is to say if the new head coach would like to shell out to bring him back, especially with a below-average cap space situation to sort out this offseason.

The Titans have a league-leading amount of cap cash to spend, and Robinson won’t come cheap. His overthecap.com valuation in 2026 is north of $19M APY, which is in part a reflection of the annual boom in the NFL cap. So while that feels like an outrageous sum, remember to think of these things in terms of cap % more than in dollar amounts. Inflation is constantly warping our perception here.

Robinson would come in and immediately be the best receiver in this room not named Calvin Ridley, who is the best on paper but still a big question mark in practice for a handful of reasons. He may not even be in Tennessee by opening day.

Robinson is Daboll’s guy. He knows him well, and he knows how to best use him. You’d have to work out the division of slot snaps with Chimere Dike, who played roughly 2/3 of his offensive snaps as this team’s big slot. There’s overlap there, but not a completely redundant skillset. If Daboll thinks he could use both of them effectively in his scheme, the Titans could consider throwing their cap space weight around to land a rare young WR on the open market.

Why Wan’Dale Robinson might not fit in Tennessee

First things first, I won’t be surprised one bit if Robinson doesn’t reach the market in the first place. A wise rule of thumb with any attractive receiver whose contract is up is to assume their current team signs them before he gets to shop around. Every single year, we see the most talked-about “free agent” receivers get locked up before the beginning of free agency. It turns out, teams are willing to spend in order to keep good receivers! And while a new coaching staff and the return of Malik Nabers makes it plausible we see Robinson test the market, it feels like a coin flip at the very best.

But even if he reaches the free agency, should the Titans be the in the market for such an expensive option? After the spending spree this team went on in 2024, fans should feel a little more hesitant to go bananas over big ticket items this time around. Banking on being the rare exception of a team that spends big on premium positions in free agency, “winning” the offseason, and it leading to overwhelmingly positive results is just bad process. I know that Mike Borgonzi and Chad Brinker believe this, because I’ve heard them say it to my face more than once. Winners are built in the draft and supplemented in free agency, not the other way around.

Tennessee has an outrageous amount of money they must spend somewhere, so perhaps that’s how they justify going in big on a familiar young face like Robinson. Of all the bigger ticket items out there, he’d be one of the most defensible buys. But there’s still the question of whether he would give Cam Ward a true alpha option. An upgrade? Absolutely. A real WR1? I think not. So are you willing to spend roughly $20M APY on a WR2? These are tricky questions to answer.

Related Articles