UPDATE: The Titans signed cornerback Darrell Baker Thursday afternoon, adding a fifth cornerback to the active roster.
There isn’t an NFL team heading into the 2024 season with fewer cornerbacks on roster than the Tennessee Titans.
So … does this matter?
“Well, I think you’re always looking for the next, whatever the fifth guy might be in that room,” Titans coach Brian Callahan said Wednesday, a day after his team cut all but four of its cornerbacks. “But we’ve also got guys in a practice squad you can elevate. They each get two elevations apiece. And usually that fifth corner is your special teams player anyway. So those are roster mechanics that we work through.
“But as of right now, with the practice squad guys and the guys on the roster feel pretty good with where that spots at, and we can always add more if one were to be available.”
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Here’s the state of the Titans’ cornerback room: Veteran offseason adds L’Jarius Sneed and Chidobe Awuzie figure to start on the outside. Roger McCreary returns as the starter at nickel. And rookie Jarvis Brownlee Jr., is the backup. That’s it for the active roster. Four players, two of whom didn’t practice for the last four weeks of training camp and one of whom has never taken a regular season snap.
No other NFL team has fewer than five cornerbacks on their active roster. Twelve teams, more than one-third of the league, are carrying six or more players who primarily play cornerback.
Titans GM Ran Carthon cautions against viewing the first 53-man roster as a final product. The roster is what it is for now, and it’ll change when it needs to change. As Carthon sees it, assembling this week’s roster is more about protecting assets than casting an identity in marble.
“We wanted to maintain a fluid position where we can make moves and not have to continue to make tough choices and get rid of people,” Carthon said. “We want to have the flexibility to continue to bring people in here.”
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The Titans do have three cornerbacks on the practice squad – Tre Avery, Gabe Jeudy-Lally, Anthony Kendall. As Callahan points out each of those players can be elevated from the practice squad for two gamedays before they have to be signed to the active roster.
Avery and Jeudy-Lally took significant reps with the first-team defense in training camp with Sneed and Awuzie out, so there’s a level of trust there. Factor in safety Jamal Adams’ ability to play in the slot if needed and the fact that McCreary and Brownlee can both play inside and outside positions and the Titans have a little more flexibility than the numbers dictate.
But fixing the secondary was one of the Titans’ biggest offseason priorities. They traded for Sneed. They signed Awuzie. They drafted Brownlee and added Adams and Diggs in the back end and hired a renowned cornerbacks coach in Dennard Wilson as defensive coordinator. This unit’s success is central to the Titans developing the identity their trying to forge in Year 1 of the Callahan era, and pivotal to the defense working as constructed.
And now the fates of the unit rest on four players who’ve spent fewer than five practices on the field together all offseason.
Survey the players, though, and they’ll tell you this doesn’t need to be a concern.
“Any concern would be from the outside,” Awuzie said. “Worry doesn’t add a day to your life.”
ROSTER TALK: Tennessee Titans finalize 53-man roster; see which players survived NFL cut day
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at [email protected]. Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.
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Publish date : 2024-08-29 09:40:00
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