Jon Ebenezer Robinson arrives at Nissan Stadium
Jon Ebenezer Robinson arrives at Nissan Stadium
Who doesn’t love Titans General Manager Jon Robinson? He did a wonderful job last year. The Titans went from being the worst team in football to being a winning team.
It has never been clear who is in charge of the salary cap limit. Amy Adams Strunk is the owner and Robinson(JRob) negotiates the contracts. The Titans have been well beneath the salary cap for years. Robinson has discussed this briefly in the past. He explained it as that he isn’t going to overpay players just to be at the cap limit. That’s reasonable and fine.
Today, Field Yates of ESPN broke a story that two Titans have agreed to take a pay cut. Da’Norris Searcy has gone from $5.6 million this year to $3.4 million this year. Next year he drops from 6.2 to 3.8. Harry Douglas is in the final year of his contract. His salary drops from $3.75 million per year to $1.75 million per year.
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Many NFL teams have to be careful with their salary total. The sum of the team’s salaries limits how many free agents they can sign and their offseason spending. Some money must remain available to sign the incoming draft picks as well. Many of the NFL teams must renegotiate contracts to free up some space under the cap. The GMs of those teams must get creative.
The Titans aren’t one of those teams. They are not hurting for money. They have $47 million available as per spotrac.
This appears to be a Titans Christmas story being aired just before the NFL draft. Robinson saw the ghost of Christmas present, Christmas past, and Christmas future.
Other than to be Scrooge, one reason could be that JRob has a mega-deal about to happen…and I do mean mega. There’s 47 mil available. If he has something up his sleeve here, then I am totally wrong and off-base.
Douglas was a utility type wide receiver. He wasn’t usually a starter, but a player that could come off the sideline and make a meaningful contribution. He played for Mike Mularkey and Terry Robiske in Atlanta and joined the Titans yielding his first considerable NFL contract of 3 years 11.25 million. While not that high for an NFL wide receiver, it was viewed as a bit much because of his time with the staff and a career sort of credit- a thanks for the memories “bump” if you will. Now JRob has cut his salary in the final year of this “thank you” deal.
Delanie Walker, Brian Orakpo, Derrick Morgan and others will be “too old” soon enough and the Titans have to be concerned with how things appear to the rest of the league. Longtime veteran Jason McCourty was cut recently and last year longtime veteran Michael Griffin was cut. Their time had come. They were overpaid and not the player they once were. In and of itself, it is probably viewed as OK by NFL veterans. When you add in “chipping away at Douglas” that has to raise some eyebrows amongst NFL veterans looking to end their careers in Tennessee. I hope the Titans veterans are well catered to, especially if this well under the cap type salary management continues.
One other note (visible on spotrac link provided earlier) is that Douglas will only cost the team $733k if he is cut. I would pencil in the Titans for two wide receivers in the NFL draft now then. Not only did Douglas agree to make himself cheaper, but he agreed to make himself easier to cut. In these smoke N mirrors that NFL GMs play with NFL contracts, this is almost always how a team sets thing up to release a player late in the summer. He would have cost the Titans $3 mil against the cap before this redo, but now it’s just 733k.
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