The Tennessee Titans finished 6-11 last season and dismissed their coach with deep Patriots ties, Mike Vrabel.
They think they might have a potential franchise quarterback in Will Levis, the 33rd overall pick last year. But they had glaring holes at left tackle, wide receiver and running back, after parting ways with franchise back Derrick Henry.
They entered this offseason with a boatload of cap space, around $90 million, and a top-10 pick, 7th overall.
The Patriots finished 4-13 and dismissed their coach who was the Patriots brand, Bill Belichick.
They traded their potential franchise quarterback, Mac Jones, and also have glaring holes at receiver and left tackle.
New England also entered the offseason with about $90 million in cap space, and a top-five pick, 3rd overall.
The respective de-facto general managers, Ran Carthon of the Titans and Eliot Wolf of the Patriots, even sounded similar at the combine when they were asked about the upcoming offseason for their teams.
"Our long-term goal is to build this football team into a consistent winner, and the way you do that is building through the draft," Carthon said.
"It's a lot of cap space. I know that's what everyone is talking about, and how much we have, but we have to spend wisely. We don't want to just load up and just go spend money. Again, we're trying to build a long-term, consistent thing, and you can't do that spending all $90 million out front. We’ve got to be patient. ... We plan to be active. But we're going to be patient and let everything come to us."
Wolf talked along the same lines.
"At the core is draft and develop. But there's different ways throughout the year to supplement your team, whether that's free agency, trades, waiver claims. You're doing yourself a disservice if you just say, 'Oh, we aren't going to do free agency this year," Wolf told Patriots.com. "As we ascend in this program, there'll be times when it maybe doesn't make sense to sign as many high-priced free agents. But we have the resources, and we have a lot of improvement that's needed within the roster."
And then the NFL offseason started ... and Carthon has been the hare to Wolf's tortoise.
The Titans, to most NFL fans - and a lot in New England, have had a dream offseason to this point, at times at the expense of the Patriots.
Tennessee outbid New England for Jaguars WR Calvin Ridley.
The Titans signed RB Tony Pollard, two offensive linemen (C Lloyd Cushenberry, G Saahdiq Charles), veteran CB Chidobe Awuzie, former first-round LB Kenneth Murray and DT Sebastian Joseph-Day before Saturday's huge move: trading a 2025 third-round pick for Chiefs star CB L'Jarius Sneed (someone the Patriots had interest in as well) and the right to hand him a reported $50 million guaranteed and $19 million annually.
To date, the Titans have handed out about $170 million in guaranteed money this offseason. Once the details of Snead's contract is known, expect the Titans to still have about $30 million left in cap space — AND the seventh overall pick to fill their left tackle void, and 38th overall.
The Patriots .... have re-signed their own players, and added some good, solid football players to plug most of the holes and fill out of the depth chart. But, to date, they have yet to spend at all on big-ticket items. (One feather in their cap: Patriots beat out the Titans on Chuk Okorafor.)
Meanwhile, the Patriots currently lead the league in cap space ($50 million), haven't solved any of their most glaring issues at QB, LT and WR, and have the third overall pick.
It's easy to understand why Patriots fans would be envious, if not downright angry, over the two paths. The Titans seem to have solved a lot of their issues and should have a better chance to compete this season in a weaker division. The Patriots look stuck in the mud and could be in big trouble if Josh Allen, Tua Tagovailoa and Aaron Rodgers all stay health this season.
What the Titans have done is sexy, fun and makes the team interesting to talk about. Any fan, or even a media member, can look at what Carthon has done and say that's the way you do it. He's knocked it out of park.
Meanwhile, it would certainly be fair to wonder if Wolf knows what he's doing. There's little doubt he has a plan that is conservative in nature, but from the outside looking in, the Patriots have done zero to this point to improve on offense - which was the biggest issue last season by far - despite having plenty of resources to do it.
I'm not going to defend Wolf on this, although I don't mind how they are essentially building things. But, in my opinion, he has to get a WR1 via trade at some point — and it might not come until after the draft to see if teams take replacements for some of their big-ticket items — because trying to replace QB1, WR1 and LT1 just via the draft ... he might as well play Mega Millions if thinks he can thread that needle.
If you wanted or expected action this offseason, Carthon and the Titans were the team for you, for sure.
Wolf is, to this point, taking the methodical approach. It's certainly boring and hard to see where the improvement is going to come.
One interesting thing is that PFF has graded the Patriots' offseason better than the Titans', if you can believe that:
Everyone's going to have a different position on this. I'm sure a vast majority of Patriots fans would give Carthon an A and Wolf an F for this offseason. I'm not going to argue against that.
But this is a fascinating case study, and we'll have a scoreboard to judge all at the end of the day. Will the Titans receive a one-year pop? Probably. But where will the teams be after Year 2, Year 3? The only thing we can do is sit and watch.
NICKEL PACKAGE
1. You put together the pursuit of Ridley and the amount of remaining cap space, I still believe Wolf will trade for a WR1 at some point. There's little doubt he saw that as a big hole that can't be filled by a rookie, unless they spent their first pick on that position. Players like Cortland Sutton, Brandon Aiyuk, DK Metcalf, Amari Cooper, Stefon Diggs, Davante Adams and Tee Higgins might be available. Would be a surprise to see Adams and Higgins dealt (the Brown family does not take kindly to trade requests), but Sutton, Aiyuk and Metcalf all make sense. Not a big fan of Cooper, but he would be the Browns offense. The Seahawks only have about $4 million in cap space left. Metcalf has two years left on his deal at $31 million. I could see old friends Wolf and John Schneider getting together on a deal.
2. I could certainly see the Patriots adding Snead to Christian Gonzalez and Jonathan Jones, but they're likely a year away from making that move. The Titans needed a CB1. The Patriots have one in Gonzalez and they've put enough resources into defense. New England is 4th in the league with defensive spending ($115 million). They are 27th in offensive spending ($89 million). Trade for a WR1 and you even things out, to say nothing of the $8 million Year 1 cap number for the third overall pick.
3. Sounds like the Patriots had the full boat – director of scouting Eliot Wolf, offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt, quarterbacks coach T.C. McCartney and head coach Jerod Mayo — at the Michigan pro day for JJ McCarthy, and they'll do the same at LSU (Jayden Daniels) and UNC (Drake Maye). Washington (Michael Penix) is the same day as UNC and won't be well attended from a Patriots' perspective. Does that mean something? Since Penix was a senior, the Patriots have met, and viewed Penix throwing, at the Senior Bowl and the combine. Same with Bo Nix. McCartney and college scouting director Camren Williams were there for that.
4. We're scheduled to hear from Jerod Mayo on Monday morning at the league meetings, and Robert Kraft on Tuesday morning. Get your question suggestions in.
5. Predictions on what talking points each will hit? I'm sure we'll hear Mayo definitively walk back his "burn some cash comment." We're burning it on own, good players. We're still looking to add, but we need to build this right through the draft.
Kraft's session will be interesting. With all that's transpired - Belichick's firing, not yet giving Wolf a contract extension, The Dynasty, lack of spending, poor scores on the NFLPA survey - I could see him being a little defensive. He doesn't have Belichick to kick around anymore.