Tennessee Titans sign Ryan Tannehill. What’s next?

Now that the Tennessee Titans have Ryan Tannehill under contract, their next decision is tagging or signing running back Derrick Henry

The new Collective Bargaining Agreement becomes official on Sunday morning. With that, the Tennessee Titans did not hesitate to re-sign Ryan Tannehill to a multi-year deal. The Titans have been set on Tannehill as their guy since, well, probably around week 16 of the 2019 season.

The Titans mentioned Tannehill as their top priority. However, that still didn’t convince the Tom-Brady-to-the-Titans crowd that Brady wasn’t going to be seen in two-toned blue. That speculation was fun while it lasted.

Tannehill’s huge deal is reportedly good for four-years, worth $118M with an average of $29.5M annually, $91M total guarantees, and $62M fully guaranteed.

The deal is well-structured by General Manager Jon Robinson. The base cap hit of $17.5M in 2020 gives the Titans some flexibility, which I will dive into in a bit. One part that I found rather interesting is Tannehill’s 2022 base salary of $29M becomes fully guaranteed on the fifth day of the 2021 league year. That gives Tennessee the flexibility of releasing or trading him if this happens to go haywire

That gives the Titans another season to evaluate him, as if he was on the franchise tag, before deciding if he really is the guy for the job. Very smart on Robinson’s end to structure the deal that carefully.

Let’s look into the immediate future now. The base cap of $17.5M puts the Titans at around $40M salary cap going forward into the 2020 new league year. That ~$40M gives them some flexibility to keep some of their other top guys long-term.

With still a respectable amount of cap space left, my expectation is that the Titans will either sign or tag running back Derrick Henry. I’m hoping they sign Henry to avoid any kind of hold outs when the season gets underway.

If the Titans were to sign Henry, I am expecting them to franchise tag Jack Conklin to keep him around for another season. That would inevitably mean defensive back Logan Ryan would be sacrificed. It is much more difficult to replace a right tackle than it is a defensive back, and also Conklin is younger.

The Tennessee Titans signing Tannehill immediately after the CBA deal was approved was proof that they’ve been sitting on these deals for weeks waiting on the new CBA to be established. It won’t be long before we hear news on both Derrick Henry and Jack Conklin.