Jaguars' division foe waves white flag with baffling in-season trade

The Jacksonville Jaguars are off to a solid start to the 2025 season. Sure, they'll need to cut down on the drops and penalties if they ultimately want to make a playoff run. That said, they're trending in the right direction under head coach Liam Coen. The same cannot be said about the division rival Tennessee Titans.

The Titans are already pressing the panic button three weeks into the NFL season. Not long after head coach Brian Callahan accepted defeat and delegated playcalling duty to quarterbacks coach Bo Hardegree, Tennessee announced that it traded cornerback Jarvis Brownlee and a seventh-round selection to the New York Jets in exchange for a sixth-round pick.

All things considered, that's not the kind of move a team that is confident it can make a playoff push would make.

Related: The Jags already wished they had waited a couple weeks to trade Tank Bigsby

The Titans are already thinking about 2026 with the Jarvis Brownlee trade

Like the Houston Texans, the Tennessee Titans are 0-3 ahead of Week 4. They could both turn things around down the stretch, but it doesn't look like the latter team thinks it's capable of pulling it off. One look at their roster confirms that suspicion.

As Justin Melo of The Draft Network noted, Tennessee is in need of two starting offensive linemen, a pair of pass rushers, including an alpha, two starting cornerbacks, a running back, and a tight end.

That's a long wish list and one that the Titans won't be able to complete in at least two years. To make matters worse, Jarvis Brownlee's teammates weren't too thrilled to see him leave. The fact that he was well-liked in the locker room could demoralize the team. Think about it, if he was playing well but got traded, "what's stopping Tennessee from cutting ties with us?"

And that's the thing, Brownlee was one of the Titans' few building blocks to start the season. A fifth-round pick in last year's draft, the former Louisville Cardinal made 14 starts as a rookie and had started two games before he was traded.

By trading him, Tennessee is throwing in the towel and beginning to plan for the future. The issue with that strategy is that general manager Mike Borgonzo did enough to fortify the roster in 2025 to make you think that they'll be able to make upgrades to the Titans in the upcoming years.

For the time being, though, it looks like the Jaguars no longer have to worry about Tennessee. Sure, they cannot afford to take them lightly when they face them later in the season, but they're not a threat to compete in the AFC South in 2025.

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