Titans receiving top grades for NFL free agent moves NFL free agency grades, the Tennessee Titans and wins
Grades for the Tennessee Titans offseason have been overwhelmingly positive. Recent history is mixed on how much a well-received offseason matters, though.
The Titans’ busy offseason has drawn raves from analysts, critics and prognosticators across the media landscape. The Sporting News gave the Titans an A grade for their acquisitions. CBS Sports gave the Titans a B+, and that was before the L’Jarius Sneed trade was finalized. NFL.com and The Sporting News both gave the Titans A grades for the Sneed trade, nearly every platform gave the Titans an A for signing center Lloyd Cushenberry and, though opinions were a little more mixed on the decision to sign receiver Calvin Ridley, The Athletic was among the outlets that gave the Titans top marks for the move.
As any coach or GM will be quick to point out, the goal when running an NFL team isn’t to win the offseason. But, obviously, making good moves in March and April is a surefire way to win a lot more in the fall and winter. The question is how good analysts actually are at discerning which moves are good and which ones aren’t in the moment.
The Tennessean examined offseason report cards from across the Internet from 2021, 2022 and 2023, combining those grades into year-by-year GPAs for each team to determine whether good offseason grades translate to teams getting better quickly.
Over the last three years, 20 teams have earned cumulative offseason GPAs of 3.5 or better, meaning they mostly received marks of B-plus or better. Eleven of those teams got better the next season, nine posted the same record or got worse. Of the 11 teams that got better, four won at least three more games than they did the year before. Six of the nine teams that failed to improve got worse by three or more games.
But let’s get a little more specific to the Titans’ situation: Ten of the 20 teams who graded as having the best offseasons were coming off years where they missed the playoffs. Five of those 10 made the playoffs in the ensuing season, but four of those five squads were nine-win teams that improved a little bit to get into the postseason. Last year’s Houston Texans team that jumped from 3-13-1 to 10-7 was the lone exception.
For comparison: More teams with offseason GPAs below 2.0 have improved by five or more wins and made the playoffs in the last three years than teams in the sample above 3.5.
So, at least recently, earning a good offseason grade is about as strong of a predictor of future improvement as a coin flip, and the teams with the longest to go seldom improve enough to contend.
None of this is a commentary on the Titans’ offseason. Nor is the Titans’ offseason complete; the NFL draft and summer free agency mean plenty of room for the team to keep getting better.
But it’s plain to see that the work can’t stop with an acclaimed offseason.
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com . Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.