This NFL offseason, Steven Ruiz will be offering his thoughts and grading every major deal that goes down, including contract extensions, trades and free-agent signings.
The Titans have found their franchise quarterback. A year after trading a seventh-round pick for Ryan Tannehill, Tennessee made him the highest-paid player in the history of the franchise, locking him down to a four-year, $118 million deal.
Tannehill is coming off a career season in which he led the Titans to a 7-3 record as a starter and an appearance in the AFC title game after replacing Marcus Mariota in the starting lineup. The 31-year-old completed 70.3% of his passes for 2,742 yards and 22 touchdowns against only six interceptions.
Will Tannehill be able to replicate the success or did the Titans just shell out big money on a player with a longer track record of mediocrity? Let’s grade the deal …
While the rest of the NFL world wonders if Tannehill can do it again, the Titans seem to be confident he can do it again based on the details of the contract laid out by ESPN’s Jeff Darlington.
Here’s more numbers on Ryan Tannehill’s deal, per source:
2020 is $17.5m fully guaranteed.
2021 is $24.5m fully guaranteed.
2022 is $29m guaranteed for injury at signing and fully guaranteed on 5th day of 2021 league year.
2023 is $27.5m base.
— Jeff Darlington (@JeffDarlington) March 15, 2020
Essentially, this is a three-year, $91 million deal with Tannehill’s 2022 salary becoming fully guaranteed next offseason and a $39.5 million dead cap hit preventing Tennessee from dropping him before that happens. And in that third year, Tannehill’s cap hit will jump to $34 million. So, in other words, Tannehill has to be just a smidge better than “a team would rather pay him $62 million for only one season than keep him on the roster” bad in order to earn that $91 million. That’s how low the bar is for him.
This is no “prove it” deal. The Titans have fully bought into the Ryan Tannehill experience until 2023.
Prior to negotiations, a reasonable goal for the Titans would have been to construct a deal that allowed them to bail after two years. That’s how the 49ers constructed the contract they gave Jimmy Garoppolo. The Titans had more than enough cap space to give Tannehill a similar structure — San Francisco was able to push most of the guaranteed money to Year 1 by giving Garoppolo a large roster bonus in 2018 — but GM Jon Robinson decided to keep his cap hit low for 2020 instead. In other words, Tennessee chose short-term cap space over the ability to pull the plug on this contract early if things go south next season. The Jaguars have a similar set-up with Nick Foles’ contract … ask them how that’s going.
Now, if Tannehill continues to play like one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, none of this will matter and Tennessee will be able to count this deal as a win. But, as I covered in December, there are plenty of reasons to believe that regression will hit Tannehill hard next season. He was unsustainably good under pressure and on play-action passes. His receivers basically caught every accurate deep ball he threw and were among the league leaders in yards-after-catch. So even if Tannehill’s individual performance doesn’t fall off, there is essentially no chance he’s able to produce at the level he did during his abbreviated time as Tennessee’s starter in 2019.
(It’s worth point out that Tannehill’s more stable production — from a clean pocket and on non-play-action attempts — wasn’t bad necessarily; it just wasn’t at the level you’d expect from a QB making $29.5 million a year. He ranked 17th in EPA per attempt on passes from a clean pocket and 18th on non-play-action attempts, per Sports Info Solutions.)
With the franchise tag looming as an option, the Titans are making an unnecessarily risky bet on a player who was available for a seventh-round pick just one year ago. Of course, the front office will probably now use that tag on Derrick Henry, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to mortgage your future on a 31-year-old quarterback who has been average throughout his career just to keep your options open for a running back — even one as good as Henry.
If Tannehill isn’t the quarterback he was in 2019, it’s hard to envision this deal working out for the Titans. If he plays poorly, they’re stuck with him anyway. If he’s just good enough to win with (but not good enough to be the reason the team is winning), it might convince the front office to build around Tannehill rather than searching for an upgrade at the position.
Grade: C-
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