Time to Wake Up: DeAndre Hopkins

Could Nicholas Petit-Frere Be the Titans' X-Factor on the Offensive Line?

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It seems Music City has been hit with a fever, a fever so intense that no mortal group can withstand the suffocating pressure it puts on its victims.

None have succumbed just yet, but the tight grip on victims nationwide has become tighter than anything we’ve seen in recent memory. They have a name for this fever, this strong strain that’s showing no signs of bowing out the national eye any time soon.

Yes, they call this fever, the Hopkins fever.

Dramatics aside, it seems the Titans could be in on the sweepstakes for star receiver DeAndre Hopkins. Well, we can probably change the “could” to a more strong term, like “are likely”, as news hit Wednesday afternoon that the Titans are scheduled to bring Hopkins in for a visit on this upcoming Sunday.

Obviously this news came as a shock, since Hopkins’ reported monetary requests and his silent — or maybe not — commitment towards joining a contender both didn’t fit within the Titans’ current make up as a team.

The Titans aren’t the best suited financially, as they sit with just over $8.3M in available cap space, a number that can’t handle the financial details that will likely sit within Hopkins’ next inevitable contract. And their roster doesn’t suit the form of a contender, particularly offensively, with numerous changes and a mountain of uncertainty pertaining to the most crucial side of the ball in today’s game.

So when news broke that Hopkins was set to make a sudden free agent visit to Nashville, fans of the two tone blue couldn’t help but voice their feelings of excitement and jubilation. It’s understandable, considering that Hopkins remains one of the league’s most consistent receivers in terms of production, and undoubtedly brings a certain element of star power that every fan desperately wants.

But I’m here today to tell fans dreaming of this well timed move, to wake up and smell the coffee in the world of reality. Hopkins joining Tennessee is a bit of a pipe dream and it’d surprise a lot of people — including me — if he suddenly dropped his desire to play for a contender, to play for a team that’ll likely be sitting around the .500 mark when the season is set and done.

Of course, dropping these explosive words warrants some explanation. Which if fine, I get it. So in that case, I’ll give you some reasons why this move just doesn’t seem likely, and screams more of a solidarity meeting between two olds friends.

Let’s Start with The Basics: Financials

The Titans aren’t in one of the better financial situations to where they can meet the financial desires of one DeAndre Hopkins.

I’m not calling the Titans broke, but I am saying this team isn’t in a position to start shuffling money around to accommodate Hopkins, without getting frisky with future money in the process.

When you’re a cash strapped team like the Titans, cap saving moves like restructures, extensions, and trades are the only logical moves you can possibly make. Of course you can also simply let cap leeching players go, but those usually come with downsides, so we’ll ignore those for now.

The first method is restructuring, which is a form of converting base salaries or roster bonuses into signing bonuses, and spreading the cap hit of the player over the remaining duration of their contract. The Titans famously did just that with Ryan Tannehill before the 2021 season began, as they converted his base salary and some other bonuses into a signing bonus, lowering his cap hit so the Titans could bring on Julio Jones.

Now they can’t do the same thing for Tannehill now, since doing so again would bring a nasty amount of money onto the Titans’ future books. But there are some players that could still be restructured, including the likes of Harold Landry and potentially Kevin Byard, although the Byard option seems pretty unlikely considering the Titans have restructured his deal in the past, and how much money would be on the future books if done so.

Landry stands out as the obvious restructure candidate, as his $15M base salary — a part of his mega deal he signed last off-season — kicks in this season. You can take some of that salary, add it to the cap hits throughout the duration of his contract, and instantly free up some room now.

The exact amount of the salary that’ll be used in this ordeal is up to the team, since they’ll come up with a final number that they’re comfortable with hitting their books in the future. But since Landry’s base salary in his new deal isn’t an astronomically high number, the money being spread over the remaining cap hits won’t be too bad.

I feel like I’m rambling on, so let me just give a quick example. Let’s say the Titans wanted to convert let’s say $13M of Landry’s base salary into a signing bonus for this season, not add any void years — which can vary for each restructure process — and open up the $10.44M of cap room that would enter the picture.

We’d go by this simple easy equation to figure out his cap hit for 2023, definitely not given to me by Zach of Football & Other F Words. 

Current Cap hit - the amount of base salary you’re trying to convert into a signing bonus + the figure you get by dividing the money you’re trying to convert into the bonus, divided by remaining years on the deal (in this case, no void years, so we’ll use 4 since Landry has 4 years remaining on his deal)

So we’d go 18.8M - 13M + 3.25M, which gives us $9.05M, Landry’s cap hit for 2023. That’s down from 18.8M. 

Then you’d simply take the 3.25M and add it to his cap hits for the rest of his contract. 

Pretty simple right?

Now the Titans can add a void year, which turns the 3.25M into around 2.6M. But this is just an example, so take it for what you want.

The point is restructuring Landry’s deal is the best restructure path the Titans can go down, without adding crazy amounts of money on the books for the future by restructuring other eligible deals.

That’s the restructuring portion of the basics. You can still extend other contracts to lower current year cap hits, or you can outright trade a player, although that has some cap consequences as well. 

Either way, the Titans will have to think hard about the cap saving moves they can make to accommodate Hopkins, and whether those moves can negatively impact their future books enough to put them off the move.

Roster Construction

Let’s address the other elephant in the room. The Titans aren’t built to compete for a Super Bowl this season.

Defensively, there’s some questions at a few spots, but none of them are concerning enough to place them alongside the real concerns. And those concerns reside offensively (surprise, surprise) where barring some miracle, the Titans should only be able to elevate to the middle of the pack.

The offensive line is full of questions across all 5 spots — a rookie, two former depth players being thrusted into full time roles, an undersized center, and a right tackle that had a pretty bad rookie year — Ryan Tannehill has his issues — although he’s always been a consistent bright spot — and the receiving core is full of nothing but hopes and dreams, as well as Treylon Burks.

Even Burks has questions himself, as his injury plagued rookie year and his already questionable ceiling paint a pretty unclear picture for him.

Tell me, after reading all of that, taking into consideration that the offense is going through a nice sized overhaul as well, do you seriously think this team is built for contention?

I think not.

That’s obviously been the vibe around this team for months now, but some optimism has started to creep in, and it isn’t at levels where realism is being taken seriously.

Overview

I’m not trying to be some debbie downer here, seriously I’m not.

In terms of my own personal feelings, adding Hopkins to this team would make me think a little about this team’s reputation for this season. I wouldn’t elevate them to contender status, but I’d be more confident in saying their offense could hold their end of the bargain more than the bare minimum amount of the time.

That’d put this team in the category of very competitive, a pretty good pick as a division winner, and teetering towards a team that will give every top team problems.

Again, that isn’t contending, but it’s much better compared to what people thought about this team before the move potentially goes down.

Still though, with the previous desires being given by Hopkins, it’s hard to envision Hopkins abandoning his conditions and joining a team with so much uncertainty.

Could he give the Titans more thought since Mike Vrabel has worked with him for a long while? Maybe, but anything other than that just feels irresponsible at this point.

I could be wrong, heck half the time I am wrong and I end up looking like one of the biggest idiots on the planet. But I think I’m confident in being right this time.

Which if I am in this case, that means the Hopkins dream will probably turn into a bit of a light nightmare for Titans fans carefully monitoring this ongoing situation.

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