Ran Carthon is telling you the Tennessee Titans aren't a quick fix, and he's right | Estes
INDIANAPOLIS — The scene was hectic and crowded. That was to be expected. Lots of revisions and pertinent questions for these Tennessee Titans right now.
The media horde at the NFL scouting combine lobbed them at general manager Ran Carthon and coach Brian Callahan for about an hour Tuesday morning, and it wasn’t long enough.
That’s the deal with the bad teams. A year ago, such a label about the Titans was debatable. Not anymore. Not after a grim 2023 season that cost Mike Vrabel his job and preceded this pivotal offseason in which nearly every position group on the roster needs help.
This isn’t going to be a quick fix.
Even with this year’s No. 7 overall draft pick and a mountain of salary cap space with which the Titans can purchase a new team for their new coach.
“We don't want to just load up and spend money,” Carthon said. “We're trying to build a long-term, consistent thing, and you can't do that spending all $90 million out front. We've got to be patient. . . . Our long-term goal is to build this football team into a consistent winner, and the way you do that is build it through the draft.”
Tuesday was Carthon’s first news conference since owner Amy Adams Strunk announced he would have full control of the Titans’ roster, and he earned high marks. He came across as a leader with belief in his approach and plan. It was his best public performance yet on behalf of the franchise.
See that thought above. Now that’s a quintessential GM answer: Patience, everyone.
Callahan, in turn, sounded like a coach.
“There’s not a lot of patience in the NFL anyway,” Callahan said when I asked him how much rebuilding can occur in one year. “You're doing the best you can to build the best team for the current year while still having a little bit of a long-range plan. But the idea is to put a competitive team on the field every year, and our expectation is no different.”
These sentiments are contrasting, but neither Carthon nor Callahan are wrong.
Patience in the NFL is indeed a mythological creature, often talked about but rarely seen. It's also true that in the coming weeks, the Titans must resist the temptation to throw money at their many problems and remember that how they fell into this predicament is the way they’ll stay out.
As Carthon said, that’s the draft.
The erosion of talent on the Titans was largely the result of poor draft classes in 2020 and 2021. Once the bill came due, it forced them to spend to address basic needs while not developing elite talent, instead asking moderate talent to replace elite talent.
ESPN.com’s Jeremy Fowler does an annual anonymous survey of NFL insiders to rank the league’s top players among each position group. Entering a 2021 season in which the Titans won the AFC’s No. 1 seed, they had seven players ranked on a top 10 list. Two others received votes.
How many would the Titans have now?
Defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons. Receiver DeAndre Hopkins could be another. Who else?
“You can never replace elite talent,” Callahan said. “You can coach guys. Coaching makes an impact. It matters. But ultimately, the better players you have, the better coach you are.”
Can't be elite without elite players in their primes. Teams usually have to draft those.
With their salary cap space, the Titans can, should and will buy some quality players and sure starters in the coming weeks of free agency. But how elite are those players if another team didn’t choose to keep paying them?
A good team can plug holes via free agency, but bad teams shouldn't build that way. The Titans aren’t just a few players away. They aren’t just patching things up.
This is full-scale renovation time.
And it sounds like the Titans aren't fooling themselves about that.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: This won't be a quick fix for Tennessee Titans. Ran Carthon knows it
