
Ian Hartitz outlines what the Titans can do during the 2026 offseason to improve on their abysmal 2025 season.

Firing your head coach midway through any given season is pretty much always a sign that something went very wrong. This was certainly true for the 2025 Titans, as there was very little to smile about other than some year-one flashes from Cam Ward, interior dominance from Jeffery Simmons and special teams goodness from the league's all-purpose yard leader, Chimere Dike.
Good news: The Titans dismal campaign (again) sets them up with a top-four overall pick, and only the Chargers have more effective cap space to work with in free agency. Bad news: There are a LOT of problems to solve with this roster at the moment—but for now, we'll just focus on three.
Dike's aforementioned all-purpose excellence included plenty of nice moments as the offense's starting slot receiver, but otherwise, fellow rookie WR Elic Ayomanor and versatile TE Chig Okonkwo were the only pass catchers who managed to get much of anything going in the absence of Calvin Ridley (broken fibula).
An optimist could point to Ridley's season-ending 5-131-1 receiving line as a sign that he was starting to figure things out with the team's hopeful franchise quarterback, although the 31-year-old veteran should hardly be relied on as the centerpiece of this passing game in the year 2026. A similar sentiment is true for Dike, Ayomanor and the team's young TE room. There's some talent there if you squint, but at the end of the day, we're looking at a passing offense that ranked among the league's bottom-five units in pretty much any efficiency metric you want to look at.
Getting in on the bidding for top-tier free agent options like Alec Pierce and Rashid Shaheed could be fun, while there should also be plenty of high-end talents in play at pick No. 4 (Carnell Tate?) and No. 35 (Chris Bell?). Hey, maybe the team could even do both! Reminder: The Titans currently boast the league's sixth-cheapest offense in terms of 2026 dollars.
This group has largely been a laughing stock for the better part of the last half-decade. PFF has handed out the following end-of-season ranks to the Titans offensive line since 2020:
Credit to the front office for spending big on LT Dan Moore last offseason and for devoting early first round picks to RT JC Latham (1.07) and LG Peter Skoronski (1.11) in 2024 and 2023; either way, better performance is needed from a group that allowed 52 sacks (second-most in the NFL) while also ranking among the league's bottom-10 offenses in yards per rush.
The Titans are built well to stop the run without loading the box, thanks to having massive human beings Jeffery Simmons and T'Vondre Sweat holding down the fort up the middle, but the secondary simply wasn't up to the task throughout 2025. Overall, the Titans joined the Bengals, Commanders and Cowboys as the only four defenses to allow at least seven net yards per pass attempt.
Cornerback is a mess, as Marcus Harris (46th) was the only Titans corner to earn a top-100 coverage grade from PFF, and the team's safeties don't grade out any better. Overall, this defense created just 14 turnovers the entire season—that's tied for the 28th-lowest single-season mark in the Super Bowl era!
Better health from guys like L'Jarius Snead, Kevin Winston and Xavier Woods would certainly help; just realize the Titans join the Cowboys as the only defenses allowing a triple-digit passer rating since 2024.
While the interior of the defensive line is strong, the EDGE room is the seventh-cheapest in the league and could lose starters Jihad Ward and Arden Key to free agency. … Tony Pollard is a cut candidate and in the last year of his contract if not.
I'd spend up to bring Colts WR Alec Pierce across the pond in free agency. The field-stretching maestro has led the NFL in yards per catch in back-to-back seasons and will only be 26 in May. Adding additional playmakers to this offense through the draft sounds great, too, but managing to land Pierce (or Rashid Shaheed) would give this offense a much-needed lid-lifter to help make life easier for everyone else.