Ran Carthon has Titans poised to compete in 2024, despite being set up to fail by the Jon Robinson era

Ran Carthon has had a couple of very busy offseasons to begin his tenure in Tennessee.

in 2023 and 2024 combined, he's churned nearly 50 seats on the Titans active roster. Both offseasons are the most turnover the Titans have seen in their 25 years since coming to Tennessee.

To his credit, Tennessee seems to be a much more talented group heading into this season. But this lack of continuity isn't something most competitive teams go through.

What can be pointed to as the reason for so much change? Well, the simple answer is lack of talent. More specifically, the lack of young, developing talent. And when you lack young talent, it's because you haven't been drafting very well.

Enter: Jon Robinson.

I didn't intend on this article being a Robinson-focused piece when I first set out on the idea. But a simple accounting of JRob-era draft pick retention, and a comparison to the Titans division rivals, demanded this be the direction in which we head.

So take a look for yourself. Below is a chart outlining AFC South draft pick retention during Robinson's tenure (2016-2022). See what sticks out to you:

The team that Tennessee is today is only marginally a result of healthy team-building process through the Draft. That's not good!

Lets break these numbers down a little bit:

For starters, something this chart doesn't tell you: half of the 10 remaining Titans from this era all came from the 2022 class. Understandably, the '16-'19 draft picks across the division are few and far between (players get old and expensive!). But the Titans 2020 and 2021 classes have just one (1!) surviving member: OL Dillon Radunz. That certainly isn't the hit-rate trend we see with the other teams listed.

What makes this both worse and, in a way, more impressive for the Titans is the fact that they never bottomed-out during this period. The Jaguars and Texans retention numbers aren't that much higher than the Titans', but both of those franchises spent much of this era blowing up! The Texans won 4 or less games in 4/7 years ('17, '20-'22) and the Jaguars won 6 or less games in 5/7 ('16, '18-'21).

Their retention rate is precisely what you'd expect to see from teams who fall apart and start over. Bad picks lead to bad teams, bad teams lose games, lost games cost jobs, and rosters are purged.

The Titans retention rate screams dumpster-fire franchise louder than any other AFC South team. And yet, they only had one losing season during this stretch. The final year of the Robinson era was a bad 7-10 team, where the wheels finally began to fall off. That's the performance that ultimately cost him his job.

The Colts remaining draft pick numbers are much closer to what you'd expect to see for a team who has avoided a full restart. One could argue GM Chris Ballard probably likes his homegrown guys a little too much, but the point remains. This is, on paper, what the healthiest long-term team building process looks like. And the Titans are/were nowhere near it.

If anything, this exercise positively reenforced my opinion of the coach that Mike Vrabel is and the caliber of player that some of those cornerstone stars were. And it certainly negatively impacted my perception of Robinson. In fairness to him, any new GM typically comes in and likes to get "their own guys". But when good players are on the roster that you inherent (especially young ones), you keep those guys around. And Ran Carthon didn't inherit a team who had that.

Does this mean the Titans can't recover quickly? No, all it takes is a couple efficient drafts and shrewd veteran contracts to begin Carthon's tenure to get them out of the youth-capital hole they're in. But the failures of the Robinson drafts have made their margins for error razor thin.