Pro Football Rumors
It is safe to say this is the worst period the Titans have experienced since relocating to Tennessee. The franchise’s Houston years produced a comparable three-year run in the early 1980s. The Oilers’ Warren Moon free agency addition helped pull them out of the NFL basement in the mid-’80s; the team is hoping its No. 1 overall Cam Ward investment will do the same 40 years later.
PFR’s Titans Offseason Outlook effort covered the team’s Robert Saleh-based staff reboot. The second-chance HC then used the offseason to reunite with many of his former Jets defenders, along with one recent 49ers charge, while he and GM Mike Borgonzi — who is now calling the shots after yet another major front office shakeup under Amy Adams Strunk — made two first-round picks. The Titans ran wild in free agency, using their considerable cap space to bolster a roster that completed a second straight 3-14 season. Will Saleh and the host of acquisitions produce an immediate turnaround?
Switching to the 4-3 scheme he ran in San Francisco and New York, Saleh will have Johnson anchoring his edge-rushing corps. The Jets picked up Johnson’s fifth-year option months after firing Saleh, but the veteran defensive-based leader was Gang Green’s HC when they chose the defensive end 26th overall in 2022. Johnson, 27, will hope to bounce back in a familiar system.
On the whole, the Eden Prairie, Minn., native has not lived up to his first-round billing. But his 2023 season under Saleh offered promise. With Johnson having little chance to reveal that season was fluky — thanks to a September 2024 Achilles tear — the Jets exercised his $13.41MM fifth-year option. A down 2025 season followed, leading to uncertainty about his future.
Playing 14 games last season, Johnson registered just three sacks on six QB hits. The Jets were believed to be more open to trading Johnson than Will McDonald at an explosive deadline last fall, and months after unloading Gardner and Quinnen Williams, New York bailed on Johnson.
Saleh’s 49ers were among the teams to show interest in Johnson at last year’s deadline, foreshadowing this Jets acquisition. Like Williams, Johnson had been eager to be traded; a Nashville trek and reunion with Saleh was one of Johnson’s preferred outcomes.
Registering 7.5 sacks and 16 QB hits in 2023 — his first starter season — Johnson rewarded the Jets and helped Saleh’s defense rank third in yardage on a Jets team that somehow won seven games with Zach Wilson replacing Aaron Rodgers four plays into the campaign. With rookie Keldric Faulk profiling as the Titans’ long-term D-end pillar, Johnson will have 2026 to make a case for an extension — one that would complement Faulk’s rookie deal — while rushing alongside high-priced interior rushers Jeffery Simmons and John Franklin-Myers. The team’s DT payments, of course, could influence its plan...
