Mailbag: Is Ryan Tannehill on Thin Ice With the Titans?

Tennessee may draft a new QB, and there’s a Cincinnati star Mike Vrabel may have his eye on. Plus, potential landing spots for Baker Mayfield and an explanation of the Patriots’ spending (or lack thereof).

JUPITER, Fla. — The NFL news cycle has slowed down for no one this month. Which made for a pretty healthy (and full) mailbag this week. And a lot for me to get to from my quick family getaway ahead of next week’s owners meetings …

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From Jason Robert (@akesandpain11): Do you think this year could be Ryan Tannehill’s “last chance” with the Titans if he doesn’t produce or flames out in the playoffs? Or does it look like a two-year commitment?

Jason, obviously, there are real questions on Ryan Tannehill’s long-term viability as the Titans quarterback after how last season ended for the AFC’s top seed, particularly since so much of their core (Derrick Henry, Kevin Byard, Taylor Lewan, A.J. Brown, Jeffery Simmons) is made up of guys in the prime of their careers, meaning this should be that group’s championship window.

Tannehill is locked in with a $29 million base this year, and a $38.6 million cap number—and that base became fully guaranteed last March. So he’ll be their quarterback this year. He’s on the books for $27 million next year, with a $36.6 million cap number. But none of the 2023 money is guaranteed, meaning the Titans could let him go, with the only real penalty being a manageable $9.6 million dead cap figure.

So I’ll be interested to see, with their second-rounder gone to Atlanta as part of the Julio Jones trade, if the Titans use one of the two top-100 picks they have (26th and 90th) on a quarterback. Ideally, I’d think GM Jon Robinson might want to trade the 26th pick to turn those two picks into three, and maybe then he’d take a quarterback with one of those picks. But this figures to be a difficult draft to trade down in.

Is there one he’d be interested in? It’s worth keeping an eye on Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder. I’ve heard that Bearcats coach Luke Fickell and his staff have really talked Ridder up privately to NFL teams. And Fickell’s best friend happens to be Mike Vrabel, the Titans’ head coach.

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From James (@crunchytaters): Do you think there is any argument to the Ravens NOT signing Lamar to a 40+ mil contract? I, personally, think he is worth it, but I see many pundits and fans who argue otherwise. What do you think?

James, this is where the Deshaun Watson contract complicates things. If I’m Lamar Jackson, or Joe Burrow or Justin Herbert, I’m asking for what Watson got—a fully guaranteed, multiyear deal. And in Watson’s case, I can understand why the Browns were O.K. with doing it. Because, really, are you going to be cutting your franchise quarterback, anyway? So long as you’re willing to fund the deal and put all that cash in escrow, it makes sense.

The question with Jackson is going to be not his viability as a player but his durability going forward, and how the Ravens perhaps using him less as a runner, in an effort to preserve him, would affect his overall effectiveness.

That’s not to say he can’t hold up or adjust. It’s just that there’s really no history telling us, or the Ravens, how this will all look five years from now. Jackson’s 176 rushes in 2019 is an NFL record for a quarterback. His 159 rushes in ’20 ranks second all-time, and his 147 runs in ’18 is third all-time. And last year, he ran 133 times in 12 games, which would project to 188 carries over 17 games.

The close comp to this sort of workload for a quarterback is Cam Newton (he had between 125 and 140 carries in 2011, ’12, ’15, ’17 and ’20), and over the last few years the toll it’s taken on his body has been clear. That sort of toll was felt by Jackson to a degree last year, too, as he missed significant time due to injury for the first in his four years as a pro.

Which brings us back to the contract and how the Watson deal plays into it. If we’re talking a traditional quarterback deal, maybe a five-year extension with the first three years guaranteed, then I’d do it without trepidation. If he wants a Kirk Cousins–type of fully guaranteed, shorter-term extension of, say, three years, then I’d do that, too. But if it’s going to be a fully guaranteed five-year extension that extends over the next six years …

I can understand where the Ravens might be careful.

That said, he’s still a dynamite player, they’ve built the whole scheme around him, and he’s young enough where you’d think he’ll keep improving. So I think, regardless of how it goes down, you gotta find a way to keep him.

From Basel Nizam (@baselnizam): Albert, two questions on Raiders …

1.) they desperately need a right tackle, any idea who they get?

2.) will Derek Carr be reasonable in his contract negotiations so more money can be spent on other positions.

Basel, Brandon Parker is back with experience at the position, as is Jermaine Eluemunor, who played for Josh McDaniels in New England. McDaniels’s old right tackle Marcus Cannon is out there, too, and there’s some depth in the draft on the offensive line—so Vegas could bolster the position then, even without a first- or second-round pick.

On Carr, talks haven’t really started yet, but I’d expect they will soon, with the hope being the two sides can find common ground between now and training camp. And I think this one is going to take some level of creativity, because I doubt McDaniels and GM Dave Ziegler are just going to give Carr a markup on the top of the market, which is now in the mid-40s (Watson’s deal comes in at $46 million per).

But I do think the new Raiders brass is sincere in really liking Carr, and wanting to get something done to keep him in Vegas for the foreseeable future, with the hope that whatever that something is helps to set the team up financially to keep building effectively around him (which is how Ziegler and McDaniels saw it done around Tom Brady for a lot of years in Foxborough).

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From RM63 (@rmille1303): What will the Browns get for Baker and where does he land?

R. Mille, word over the weekend was they were looking for a first-round pick, and I’d be floored if that happened. Last week, I had a couple of teams tell me they thought a second- or a third-round pick would be a fair price for Baker Mayfield. After Carson Wentz fetched two third-rounders (one of which can become a second), I figured it might be feasible. I feel less strongly about that after seeing the return on Matt Ryan.

And there’s an important element at work here that people often ignore in trades—the contract is an important piece of the equation. He’s making a lump sum of $18.858 million this year, and every dollar of it is fully guaranteed. That’s a lot and naturally bumps down the draft-pick price another team is willing to pay (just as a later-round pick such as Gardner Minshew will have a contract that’ll bump up his draft-pick price).

So I’m not sure who’s willing to take on a player who was overdrafted but still carries himself like a superstar, and is making that kind of money. While Carolina, on paper, might make sense, the Panthers sort of did the same thing last year in acquiring Sam Darnold, and are already depleted of picks to deal as a result of it. Seattle could do it, and maybe throw Mayfield into a competition with Drew Lock, which would be kinda fun.

And if those two don’t dive in? It’s hard to find a match for Mayfield.

From Andy Gresh (@TheRealGresh): What are you drinking on the plane?

Ginger ale. As those who follow me on Twitter know, I’m sitting you-know-what between my 7-year-old and my 5-year-old. So I gotta have my head on a swivel.

(And if that doesn’t work out, Gresh, then I’ll update you on what I order next.)

From Geo (@yanks42): How likely are the #Jets to trade back with one of their top 10 picks?

Geo, they’re picking fourth and 10th, and I’d bet they’ll be one of the teams in the top 10 that tries to trade picks out to next year, mostly because this year’s class is just O.K. at the top, and there are high-end guys still in school (Alabama edge-rusher Will Anderson, Georgia 3-technique Jalen Carter) that bring promise that the 2023 class will have more blue-chippers in it.

And why would teams look to trade out to next year? Because I think it’ll be hard to trade down out of the top 10, because this is a year, unlike last year, where the difference between the fifth pick and 25th pick won’t be huge. So teams picking, say 17th or 18th or 19th might not have motivation to deal off capital to move up—unless it’s for something specific, such as filling a need at a position where a team sees only one or two real difference-makers.

Based on the makeup of the class as a whole, and how the position groups set up, there probably won’t be many occurrences like that.

From Adam St.Onge (@adamst18): What’s your prediction in the AFC west?

Pain.

From BigMikeC68 (@BigMikeC68): What the hell are the Patriots doing? Buffalo has spent 50 million more than them. The cap is nonsense.

Mike, I think they’re more or less doing what they said they would back at the combine. They told agents of top free agents in Indy that they wouldn’t be shopping in the high-end market this year, but to get back to them if this client or that client saw his market fall through—a tact that the Patriots have often taken in the past.

Some agents looked at that and laughed, believing New England thought it could score on Brady era–style discounts, where free agents would go to Foxboro to play with Brady to either ring-chase and revive their own stock on one-year deals. Such bargains haven’t materialized for the Patriots, but their strategy in handling the free-agent market has been true to that form.

They waited on the market to settle, then re-signed their right tackle, Trent Brown, at a very reasonable rate, and brought Leonard Fournette in for a visit (Fournette leveraged that interest into a new deal with the Buccaneers). I’d expect more of this in the weeks to come. And as for your feeling that the cap is nonsense, you’re right to a degree—the Patriots did their own fair share of mortgaging at the end of the Brady era.

That they’re not now, to me, is more of a reflection of where they are in their building process than anything else. Although you could argue that, with the cap set to explode over the next couple of years, the cost for pushing cap charges into the future is less relevant than ever before.

From G (@GaG1432): Over under 3.5 first round QBs

G, I still go under. And the reason why has to do not just with what you hear about NFL teams’ feelings on this year’s class (not great), but also where the bar is at the position—it’s higher than it’s ever been.

Over the last 14 months, we’ve seen the Rams move off Jared Goff to get Matthew Stafford, the Niners start the process of moving off Jimmy Garoppolo by drafting Trey Lance and the Browns moved off Baker Mayfield to get Deshaun Watson. Goff and Garoppolo were QBs in their 20s, who’d taken their teams to Super Bowls, and had multiple years left on their contracts. Mayfield piloted the Browns’ first playoff win since Bill Belichick was their coach.

None of that matters, because being good at the position, these teams determined, was no longer good enough. And so I think quarterback-needy teams have to be asking themselves the same questions the Rams, Niners and Browns did—essentially, will Kenny Pickett, Malik Willis, Matt Corral, Desmond Ridder or Sam Howell ever be more than Goff or Garoppolo or Mayfield were, or good enough to get past the Josh Allens and Patrick Mahomeses of the NFL.

Ultimately, I think Willis and Pickett probably go in the first round just because of overall demand at the position. But because of the makeup of the class, and the way the position is being handled these days, I can’t imagine there’d be four to go in the first round.

From FL_PIRATE (@FLPIRATE40): Do you own a Tom Brady jersey?

No. But my sons do.