The Tennessee Titans have a massive offseason ahead of themselves, with the offense in particular set to be revamped over the coming months in some capacity.
At the very least, you’d have to imagine that the personnel at wide receiver and along the offensive line is going to look drastically different than they did in 2022.
Thankfully, the tight end position isn’t nearly as dire of a need in 2023 thanks to Chigoziem Okonkwo’s dominant rookie season. However, there are still a lot of questions surrounding the overall depth of the group.
This article is going to discuss which tight ends are under contract for next season, which ones are set to hit free agency, as well as the different routes that Tennessee could go over the coming months.
We have already covered the quarterback, running back and wide receiver situations, which you can check out in the links provided. Having said all that, let’s dive right into our latest offseason positional preview.
Who’s under contract?
Chigoziem Okonkwo: $996,085 cap hit
Kevin Rader: $1.01 million cap hit
Thomas Odukoya (futures): $750,000 cap hit
Justin Rigg (futures): $750,000 cap hit
The Titans obviously have a budding star at the top of their depth chart, but there is no denying that the team would undoubtedly benefit from adding some more talent to the room.
Odukoya and Rigg are on futures deals, meaning it’s hardly a guarantee that either will make the 53-man roster. The same can be said for Rader, who was TE4 in 2022.
Who’s a pending free agent?
Austin Hooper: $2.690 million cap hit in 2022
Geoff Swaim: $2.66 million cap hit in 2022
Both of these tight ends were on the books for relatively cheap deals in 2022, but the Titans are paying for it this offseason, as both Swaim and Hooper were given a “void year” to lower last year’s cap hit.
Despite not being on the 2023 roster as of right now, Hooper will still eat up approximately $3.3 million of Tennessee’s salary cap, while Swaim will only account for $825,000.
Nevertheless, it should go without saying that paying over $4 million to players that will likely be playing elsewhere is less than ideal for a team that is currently $23 million over next season’s salary cap.
What the Titans will do
There is a slim chance that the team chooses to re-sign Hooper considering he was solid last year in his role.
Realistically, I don’t see the Titans being interested in signing a tight end that is expected to get around $5-6 million when they already have a younger, cheaper, and better option on their roster.
Nonetheless, I could see the team investing another mid-round pick at the position and possibly signing an established veteran to a cheap depth deal.
Spotrac currently has a few free-agent tight ends that are projected to make less than $2 million, and I think the Titans should try to grab at least one of those.
From that group, Drew Sample, Adam Shaheen and Eric Tomlinson are some of the names that stand out.
Now, if the team wants to financially invest a little more than that, some of the intriguing options are Robert Tonyan, Hayden Hurst, Dan Arnold, Irv Smith Jr., and Adam Shaheen.
The biggest names on the market are Mike Gesicki, Evan Engram and Dalton Schultz, but they all figure to be far too expensive to make sense for the Titans, and chances are Schultz and Engram will go back to their teams.
As far as the draft goes, some people believe the Titans should target one of the top tight ends in the class, such as Notre Dame’s Michael Mayer or Utah’s Dalton Kincaid.
However, I don’t see that being a realistic option with someone like Okonkwo on the roster.
You can only run so much 12-personnel these days, and truthfully, this team would be overly investing in a position that usually doesn’t warrant that type of investment.
You could make the argument that someone like Kincaid is really just a big slot receiver, but if that’s what they want, then Tennessee should probably just draft someone like Jaxon Smith-Njigba if they want a slot weapon that badly.
Overall, I think this team will be rather conservative with this position and only make secondary additions that aren’t going to set the league on fire once they get announced.
