The Tennessee Titans don’t sound like they are set on drafting a “generational talent” with April’s No. 1 overall pick.
They sound like they’d prefer to trade out.
Titans president of football operations Chad Brinker is getting a lot of attention for saying on Wednesday that “if there’s a generational talent” available at the No. 1 pick, “you don’t pass that up,” as he first said on 104-5 The Zone’s Ramon, Kayla & Will show.
But the focus should be on what Brinker called his ideal roster-building scenario: to acquire more picks.
“Ideally if we could map it out perfectly, you’d really want about 30 picks over the next three years. And 12 of those need to come in the top 100,” Brinker said.
This means that the Titans are open for business. And that means the Giants may be only one Joe Schoen phone call away from trading up to No. 1 overall to select New York’s choice of Miami quarterback Cam Ward or Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders.
Would that be wise?
The Titans desperately need a quarterback themselves. So if Brinker and new GM Mike Borgonzi would rather trade back than take Ward or Sanders, that speaks volumes about their evaluation of the passer that the Giants would be charging up to take.
It only takes one team to have conviction on a player to draft him, though. The Giants don’t have a single quarterback under contract entering the offseason, and a big swing on a QB is worth it in a modern NFL that is divided by the haves and have-nots at that exact position.
To be clear, the Titans sent strong signals they do not intend to take a quarterback at No. 1.
Brinker said of incumbent Will Levis: “He’s gonna get an opportunity to compete for a starting job next year.”
That’s not happening with a No. 1 overall pick in the building.
No evaluator of this NFL Draft considers Ward or Sanders a generational talent, either. So that description of the player the Titans would stay and take does not include them.
It might apply in their minds to Colorado corner/receiver Travis Hunter or Penn State edge rusher Abdul Carter. But that’s a stretch, too.
So Wednesday’s Titans media tour basically served as an invitation from Nashville to the rest of the NFL to call Borgonzi’s phone about the No. 1 overall pick.
The new GM even joked that he’d already received some soft overtures.
“I think I got some feelers,” he said with a laugh at his introductory press conference. “Yeah. Some congratulatory [texts] but ‘Yeah, keep in touch.’”
Still, Schoen might not have to make the trade up to No. 1 overall for the quarterback he wants, based on the limited competition at the top of this draft.
The Cleveland Browns at No. 2, the Las Vegas Raiders at No. 6 and the New Orleans Saints at No. 9 stand out as the only obvious threats. The Seattle Seahawks seem like they’re too far back at No. 18.
The Browns and Giants also know that the Titans don’t appear to be picking a quarterback. So the only concern is losing the opportunity to take their preferred QB to another more aggressive team.
That could be enough to drum up a market for Tennessee, even with them signaling that the top QBs will still be on the board at pick No. 2 if the Titans stay put.
The No. 1 overall pick isn’t traded often.
The Carolina Panthers traded up with the Bears in 2023 from pick No. 9 to No. 1 to take Bryce Young. They gave Chicago a haul: two first-round picks (2023, 2024), two second-round picks (2023, 2025) and wide receiver D.J. Moore.
The Rams sold the farm to the Titans in 2016 to move from No. 15 to No. 1 to take Jared Goff: two first-round picks (2016, 2017), two second-round picks (both 2016) and two third-round picks (2016, 2017).
Before that, a trade to No. 1 overall hadn’t happened since 2001.
That year, the Falcons moved up from No. 5 to No. 1 to pick Michael Vick. Atlanta gave the San Diego Chargers their first-round pick, a 2002 second-rounder and a 2001 third-rounder.
If the Giants were to move up from No. 3 to No. 1, then, the cost obviously would not be what the Panthers gave Chicago to move up eight spots in 2023.
But it also would not be as cheap as the Falcons’ trade up for Vick.
There is an opportunity cost associated with a team giving up the No. 1 overall pick in an NFL Draft. And if the Giants were bidding against another team like the Browns, Raiders or Saints, there would be a cost to win that competition and give Brinker, Borgonzi and the Titans something sufficient.
Schoen also would have the advantage, though, of letting Tennessee slide down only two slots to No. 3 rather than plummeting down the draft board. So that could be an advantage for the Giants in sealing a deal.
Working with the Titans seems like it would be a little bit unorthodox based on Wednesday’s strange press conference, where Brinker wouldn’t even let new Borgonzi sit at the dais by himself.
Brinker wouldn’t even give a straight answer when asked twice if he had the power to overrule Borgonzi on the team’s No. 1 overall pick. So Tennessee, it seems, has its own problems.
Still, that’s not the Giants’ problem. Their problem is at quarterback. And their job is two-fold:
First, they have to decide if any of these quarterbacks is worthy of the No. 3 pick — let alone the No. 1 pick — especially when a QB-needy team like Tennessee seems so intent on passing on those players this early in the scouting process.
The Giants have the same problem as Tennessee: they don’t just need a quarterback. They need a ton of talent upgrades throughout the rest of their roster, too. Maybe signing a veteran quarterback, using a mid-round pick on a rookie QB and strengthening the roster around their quarterbacks in the first round is a better bet in their eyes.
Second, the Giants’ job is to listen to what Brinker had to say on Wednesday about wanting to accrue more draft picks — an idea he doubled down during a sit-down with reporters.
“As far as that No. 1 pick, you can’t pass up on a generational talent. We won’t do that,” Brinker said, per The Tennessean. “But we also have to look at all the options available to us there as well, because we want to build this team for the long term. I mentioned this before, if I can map this out perfectly, I’d love to have 30 picks over the next three years, and 12 of those picks come from the top 100. That would be ideal. That’s how you flip your roster, that’s how you get youth on your roster.”
The Titans’ football czar added that it would be nice to find Jayden Daniels, as Washington did. It just doesn’t happen often.
“You don’t always get the generational talent at quarterback right off the bat, like how it seems like Washington,” Brinker said. “They’ve been able to flip their team pretty quickly. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to try. We’re going to do everything we can. We’re going to look at every avenue.”
The Giants are on that avenue. Now it’s time to see if Schoen acts.