Tennessee Titans Are Starting Over, and They Know It

The Tennessee Titans won three games last year and deserved roughly three games. There's no injustice to unwind here, no hidden competitiveness the record obscured. The structural win total — derived from point differential using the fitted points-per-win formula — came out to 3.1. The luck delta was -0.1. In other words, the ledger and the scoreboard agreed: this was a 3-win football team.

The point differential was -194, which is the kind of number that tends to end coaching tenures. It works out to about 11.4 points per game in the wrong direction. Their 2-5 record in one-score games looks like bad luck on its face, but when you're being outscored by nearly a touchdown a game, you're not really a team that one bounce away from being .500. You're a team that happened to keep five games close enough for the coin flip to matter.

What that means for 2026 is simpler than it sounds: there's no phantom competitiveness to project forward. The bounce-back signal that makes a six-win team with a great point differential so interesting simply isn't present here. The Titans weren't unlucky. They were rebuilding, and they still are.

The EPA profile tells you most of what you need to know. On offense, the Titans produced -0.23 expected points added per pass attempt and -0.07 per rush attempt. Both numbers are negative, which means the offense was actively costing them field position and points on a per-play basis, not just losing because of volume or turnover variance. The run game was a lesser problem than the passing game, but neither was a foundation to build on.

Defensively, opponents produced 0.21 EPA per pass attempt against the Titans, which is among the more damaging marks in the league for a defense to surrender through the air. The run defense was better — opponents generated -0.03 EPA per carry, meaning the Titans at least held their own on the ground. The problem was that NFL offenses do most of their damage through the air, and this secondary gave it up readily. A 37.9% third-and-fourth down conversion rate on offense rounds out the picture: when they needed to extend drives, they generally couldn't.

There is one number that cuts the other way. The Titans posted a red zone EPA per play of +0.11, which means when they did get into scoring position, they converted at a rate that was at least league-average or better. That's a thin positive to carry out of an otherwise bleak season, but it suggests the skill-position infrastructure isn't entirely bare. The problem was getting there.

Then-coach Brian Callahan — who is no longer with the team — went 69.5% in agreement with the decision model on fourth downs and go-or-kick situations, while going for it only 10.5% of the time against a model recommendation of 32.4%. The gap between those two go-rates translates to 0.43 expected wins lost per season. On a three-win team, that margin isn't incidental.

The most important offseason move Tennessee made was the one that didn't cost a dollar. Incoming head coach Robert Saleh brings a career expected-wins-lost rate of 0.46 per season — essentially a wash with Callahan's 0.43. The decision model sees no meaningful upgrade there, and the brief is honest about it: this hire is about culture, defensive identity, and the things the Decision Index doesn't capture. Saleh spent years building defenses in San Francisco and New York; that background matters on a team that gave up 0.21 EPA per pass attempt last year.

On the roster side, the Titans brought in John Franklin-Myers (edge, 3 years, $21M APY) from Denver and Alontae Taylor (cornerback, 3 years, $19.3M APY) from New Orleans. Both land with WATCH verdicts — Franklin-Myers at the 95th percentile of edge pay at age 30, Taylor at the 98th percentile of corner pay at age 26. Taylor's age makes the price easier to accept; Franklin-Myers's age makes it harder. Wan'Dale Robinson arrived from the Giants on a $17.5M APY deal and is the only arrival with a production win figure attached: 0.32, against a market-implied 1.42. That gap is worth noting. Cordale Flott (CB, $15M APY), Jacob Martin (edge, $9M APY), Daniel Bellinger (TE, $7M APY), and Mitchell Trubisky (QB, $5.25M APY) round out the free-agent class.

Two existing deals drew WATCH verdicts of their own. Jeffery Simmons signed a three-year, $35.3M APY extension — the top of book for interior defensive linemen, at age 29, with a $12.1M dead-cap exit in 2028. Peter Skoronski's four-year, $25M APY extension puts him at the top of the left guard market at 25, with no clean exit in the structure. Both deals are defensible on talent; both carry the risk that comes from paying any position's absolute ceiling.

The draft class leads with Carnell Tate, a wide receiver out of Ohio State taken fourth overall, worth 2.05 chart wins — the single largest value addition in this offseason by the trade chart. Keldric Faulk (DE, Auburn, pick 31, 1.07 chart wins) and Anthony Hill Jr. (LB, Texas, pick 60, 0.80 chart wins) follow. Later picks include Fernando Carmona (G, Arkansas, 0.33), Nicholas Singleton (RB, Penn State, 0.25), Jackie Marshall (DE, Baylor, 0.21), Pat Coogan (C, Indiana, 0.19), and Jaren Kanak (TE, Oklahoma, 0.15). The departures — Chigoziem Okonkwo to Washington, Arden Key to Indianapolis, and Sebastian Joseph-Day to Pittsburgh — were all modest contributors, and none of those losses should sting much on paper.

The net offseason production wins figure is +0.31 — that's the honest accounting when you attach actual production numbers to the arrivals and departures. The market-implied number is +5.81, because the team spent real money on real players. The gap between those two figures is where roster-building reality lives. Most free agents are priced at or above their production, and Tennessee paid top-of-market rates for several of them.

The cap posture is unusual in one specific way: the quarterback position is consuming just 5.6% of the cap, which is either a massive structural advantage or a flashing warning sign depending on whether Trubisky — or whoever wins training camp — can produce. Every contending team that's paying 5% at QB is doing so because they have a rookie deal holding the position. Tennessee has that number because they don't yet have a franchise quarterback at all. The $291.1M in future proration is the more pressing concern; that's the shadow on every future offseason.

The positional spending profile has gaps. The cap model shows tight end at -0.88 standard deviations below league average — the biggest shortfall on the roster. Linebacker is at -0.78. Running back, at +0.63, is the one position where they're spending above average, which is a mild curiosity on a team still searching for a passing game. The draft addressed linebacker with Hill and added some depth at edge, but the TE void remains real, and Bellinger's 26 targets in 2025 don't suggest he's the answer.

The overall verdict is that the Titans helped themselves modestly, spent heavily in spots that carry aging and pricing risk, and remain fundamentally dependent on a resolution at quarterback that this offseason did not provide. Tate at fourth overall is the investment that changes the calculus — but wide receivers need quarterbacks, and this one doesn't have one yet.

Here's the accounting, walked straight through. The structural base coming out of 2025 is 3.1 wins, derived from the -194 point differential. Add the net offseason production wins: +0.31. Apply the coach decision delta: -0.03, because Saleh's career decision rate is marginally worse than Callahan's, though both figures round to the same practical effect. The sum is 3.4 structural wins for 2026.

That is an accounting projection from the ledger — not a betting line, not a prediction, and not a claim about what will happen if Tate turns into a star or Saleh's defense takes a year to install. It's what the math hands you when you net last year's performance against this offseason's changes.

The falsifier is straightforward: if the Titans win seven or more games in 2026, this read is wrong. That outcome would require either a quarterback resolution that isn't visible in the current roster, a defensive leap well beyond what the new arrivals project to produce, or the kind of one-score game variance that can flip half a win total in either direction. Any of those things can happen. But the base case, per the ledger, is a team still in the early stages of a rebuild — and nothing about this offseason changes that fundamental picture enough to argue otherwise.

The brief shows no vacated opportunity from the departure side — Okonkwo, Key, and Joseph-Day didn't leave behind a target share worth tracking. The more interesting arrival, from a fantasy standpoint, is Wan'Dale Robinson. He saw 140 targets in 2025 and posted 217.9 PPR points, which works out to 1.56 PPR points per target. That's a respectable efficiency number, though not an elite one. His $17.5M APY contract suggests the market has already noticed him; this is a priced asset, not a sleeper.

Daniel Bellinger is worth a mention for the efficiency figure alone: 2.29 PPR points per target on 26 looks in 2025. That's a small sample, but tight ends who convert at that rate on limited opportunities tend to be interesting when opportunity expands. The cap model shows Tennessee spending 0.88 standard deviations below average at the position, which means the target share is genuinely there to be claimed. Whether Bellinger can claim it against a still-thin quarterback situation is the honest caveat. At $7M APY, the market hasn't overreacted to him yet — and in fantasy terms, that combination of efficiency and underpriced opportunity is the actual definition of a sleeper worth watching.

Mitchell Trubisky posted 31.1 fantasy points in 2025 — a number with limited utility given the context — and is best treated as a bridge placeholder unless training camp changes the picture. Carnell Tate enters a target-thin environment with a quarterback question still unanswered; his fantasy upside is real but firmly conditional. The brief flags no aging fades for this roster, which is one of the quieter good-news items in an otherwise sobering set of numbers.

Everything above traces to a live instrument, and the receipts stay public: the GM boards carry Robert Saleh's decision card, the team's cap posture ($291.1M already charged to future caps), and every contract verdict with its falsifier and review date — including Jeffery Simmons (WATCH), Peter Skoronski (WATCH), John Franklin-Myers (WATCH), Alontae Taylor (WATCH). When the season grades these reads, the grades post whether they flatter us or not.