Robinson Won't Pay Clowney Sight Unseen

Titans general manager reiterates that 'you want to make sure that the player is healthy.'

It remains a rumor, but there is a growing sense that it could become reality.

Three-time Pro Bowl defensive end Jadeveon Clowney is the biggest prize left on the NFL’s free agent market. It’s unclear when he and the Tennessee Titans were last in contact, but during a Tuesday night conversation with Paul Kuharsky, general manager Jon Robinson added to the idea that the sides eventually could agree on a contract.

“What I’ve seen on Twitter, him rushing off the edge and hitting that bag,” Robinson said. “Anytime you are dealing with whatever the contract is going to command, you want to make sure that the player is healthy, that you are able to allow your doctors to see him, to look at it, to make sure everything is going to be good.”

In the case of Clowney, Robinson has his reasons for wanting to make sure he is healthy before going forward with any sort of workout or offer.

The 27-year-old has dealt with a few injuries in his career, and is coming off of core muscle surgery. To date, the NFL has not allowed teams to bring in free agents for workouts or physicals due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

On a podcast appearance with Dan Hellie, who is Tennessee’s play-by-play voice on preseason television broadcasts, Titans head coach Mike Vrabel said they are willing to wait for Clowney.

“Not having the ability to bring players in is another, I think, hurdle with some of these guys that may have had offseason surgery or had some procedure done or something that they maybe just weren’t 100 percent and you needed to look at them or you needed to have your doctors look at them,” Vrabel said. “That’s, I think, part of it. That’s part of the holdup.”

Vrabel spent one season (2017) as Clowney’s defensive coordinator with the Houston Texans before took over the Titans. That season was Clowney’s most productive season to date. En route to his second consecutive Pro Bowl, Clowney played in all 16 games and had a career-high 9.5 sacks, 21 tackles for loss and 21 quarterback hits. He was the only AFC player with at least 20 tackles-for-loss and 20 quarterback hits.

That alone may be the reason why Robinson daydreamed for a moment on Tuesday about what it would mean to have Clowney on the roster.

"You've got (Harold) Landry, you've got (Vic) Beasley, you've got Clowney -- hypothetically, to your point -- you've got Jeffery Simmons, you've got DaQuan (Jones), who's got some power rush, you've got (Kamalei) Correa who goes 100 miles an hour, you've got a lot of different pieces that you can move around," he told Kuharsky "And you've got athleticism with Landry, with Beasley, with Correa, you can drop those guys into coverage and send David Long, Rashaan Evans, Jayon Brown or whoever it might be.

“It just gives you a lot of chess pieces in that game."