2024 Team Previews: Tennessee Titans

Tennessee Titans 2024 Preview

All ADP data is courtesy of Fantasy Pros.

** = target in drafts at this ADP

Top 120         

**Calvin Ridley, WR (ADP: 79, WR35): Ridley is the top of the ticket for a Titans receiving corps that is finally looking healthy again after their ill-advised decision to trade A.J. Brown rather than pay him and hope that then-rookie Treylon Burks could do A.J. Brown stuff. Whoops! Burks wasn’t ready for primetime, and it turns out Brown is one of the best WRs in the NFL. The Titans offense hasn’t been the same since, and now that they’ve fully committed to Will Levis as their signal caller, they’ve re-prioritized giving him weapons. Ridley is an interesting choice to be the new WR1 here, because he spent 2023 in Jacksonville serving a similar purpose with mixed results.

Coming off a bout a year and a half long layoff, Ridley put up fine year-end numbers – 76 receptions, 1,016 yards and eight touchdowns – but the production didn’t always feel helpful because of how feast or famine he was. Ridley had six games with 89+ yards, and seven of his touchdowns came in those games. When he was hot, he was a legit fantasy WR1, but he also had nine games with 40 or fewer yards, and in five of those games he posted three or fewer receptions. Gross! The good news is that, per Reception Perception, that isn’t all on Ridley. While he wasn’t the Ridley of old before his mental health/gambling issues derailed an ascendant career, he was still a quality top target who was beating man at a better than 70% clip and zone at an 80.4% rate. His route tree success was almost completely above average aside from curls, which, unfortunately, was tied for his most run route. In fact, nines and curls each made up 18.9% of his routes run; curls were by far his lowest success rate, and while he was good on the nines, it’s by definition one of the lower percentage routes because it’s so far down the field.

Ridley’s a technician, and he’s best utilized as a chess piece all over the formation running tons of routes to keep a defense on its toes, always worrying about where he is. In Jacksonville, he was lined up on the outside 81.8% of the time, creating very little mystery for opposing secondaries. Tennessee has a more versatile pass-catching group, so if the deployment of Ridley improves, he should see an uptick in his production even with a downgrade at QB. If he improves on last year’s numbers at this ADP, that will be a fantasy value.

**Tony Pollard, RB (ADP: 82, RB27): Pollard and his backfield mate Tyjae Spears were covered pretty in depth here, but Pollard’s ineffectiveness in goal line scenarios last season bears repeating. Pollard was handed the ball 16 times inside the five yard line last year, turning those carries into just two touchdowns. So while we were all crying about Ezekiel Elliott’s involvement the previous season, Pollard’s ineptitude as a goal line back in 2023 was legendary, and a justification for Elliott’s 2022 usage. Pollard’s brutal TD to opportunity ratio torpedoed his overall production for fantasy managers and made him a complete bust at his late first round ADP, and it obscured the fact that he wasn’t really all that bad last year. It’s just that in our game, bad is relative.

Pollard wound up with over 1,300 yards from scrimmage and six touchdowns on the season. He remained a big play threat – eight plays of 20+ yards, three touchdowns from beyond the five-yard line – and he was an active participant in the passing game with 55 receptions and 311 yards through the air. Pollard disappointed us in 2023 because we seemed to fail to understand what he is, and that’s really a very nice RB2. Pollard was still PFF’s No. 15 RB last season, and we have seen that the final numbers were solid. Now that we have our TD expectations in check, he should be a guy who is once again returning value for us because he’s going to consistently put up yardage, break some big plays and long scores, and his ADP has dropped to a point where double-digit TDs aren’t necessary to justify it.

DeAndre Hopkins, WR (ADP: 95, WR42): Hopkins is being treated as a 1A to Ridley based on the closeness of their ADPs, and while he had similar production last season – 75 receptions, 1,057 yards, seven touchdowns – I’m more bullish on Ridley in 2024 than D-Hop. Hopkins is entering his age 32 season, and while his final stat line compares well with Ridley’s, Hopkins benefitted from a greater stranglehold on Tennessee’s target share. With Ridley now in house, that target share is bound to drop, and a smaller piece of an already miniscule passing pie isn’t a recipe for fantasy value.

From a real-life standpoint, this is actually a nice development for him, because he still has the skill set to be a high-end possession receiver, and his contested-catch skills will keep him as a frequent target for Levis in the red zone. I’d expect Hopkins’ receptions to remain similar or drop a bit, his yardage to dip, but his touchdowns to stay the same, or even rise a bit since the stat isn’t sticky, and Levis could improve as a passer with more games under his belt. This ADP seems to price in a bit of a fall-off for Hopkins, so even if I’m not viewing it as a slam dunk, it’s at least not an overpay.

Tyjae Spears, RB (ADP: 103, RB35): Spears is pretty much Pollard before he became Pollard, so it’s interesting to see him now be held back a bit because his Charizard is ahead of him on the depth chart. Pollard is a bigger back than him, but not by much, and their skill sets overlap almost completely, making it hard to pigeonhole one into early down work and the other into a passing downs specialty. There’s a world where they trade series and sink each other’s value completely. There’s a world where Spears is used sparingly, and he’s just a full-on injury contingency for Pollard, who gets used like he did in Dallas.

Spears was very effective when given opportunity last season, but his usage was really hampered because this offense revolved around Derrick Henry. There will be more balance in 2024, but Pollard is going to be running ahead of him to begin the season. I like this ADP for Spears because he’s got the talent to be a real breakout. Opportunity is his issue, and while I don’t believe he’s built to be a workhorse, he’s not freakish enough to be a weekly starter with the type of workload that we saw with De’Von Achane in Miami, for instance. I’m willing to draft him here as a lottery ticket, but picking Spears with any level of expectation is a very big risk. Make sure if you have Tyjae Spears, it’s for depth.

Fantasy Relevant (120-150 ADP)

Favorite Deep Sleeper

Chigoziem Okonkwo, TE (ADP: 187, TE21): I identified Okonkwoo as my breakout TE for 2023, and I just whiffed. He finished the season with 54 receptions, 528 yards and one measly touchdown. This offense was poor last season, ranking ninth-worst in pass DVOA (1.0%) while attempting the second-fewest passes (494), scoring the sixth-fewest points (305), and running the second-fewest plays in football. Okonkwo’s a physically talented and explosive guy, but as we saw for years with Jonnu Smith, this team has just not been able to turn that into a useful fantasy option beyond as a streamer. Now this receiving corps has been upgraded for a QB I am not confident can support a bunch of fantasy options, and it’s still likely to be a run-heavy environment. So he’s my favorite sleeper because I’m still enamored with the raw talent, but expectations are low.

Deep Cuts (150 & later)

Will Levis, QB (ADP: 167, QB24): Levis wasn’t very good last year. We touched on how little this offense threw the ball, and what a slow pace they played at, and a big part of that was Levis being a raw QB whom they couldn’t trust with a lot. He threw eight touchdown passes in nine games, racking up 1,808 yards (200.9 per game) while tossing four picks. It’s worth noting that half of his touchdown passes came in his first start, in which he only threw for 238 yards on 29 attempts. Levis is a believer in his own physical gifts, with nines and post routes being among his most frequently thrown routes, which is good news for Ridley, but his overall inaccuracy (65.7%) mitigates the excitement that comes from a player who threw 20% of his passes beyond 20 yards.

He should improve this year just because he’s getting more reps and throwing to better players, but he’s not really a viable option outside of SuperFlex/two-QB formats. The intrigue comes moreso from what he can do for his pass-catchers, and unfortunately I think he’s, at best, supporting Ridley and Hopkins, and potentially just Ridley.

Tyler Boyd, WR (ADP: 258, WR83): Boyd improves the Titans’ offense, but mostly in a real-life sense. Boyd hasn’t touched 1,000 yards since 2019, and he’s consistently operated in an offense with two top targets clearly ahead of him in the pecking order. That’s still the case after leaving Cincinnati, but with a way worse QB. Even in very deep leagues, I’m not particularly interested in him because I don’t see any ceiling.

Treylon Burks, WR (ADP: 314, WR96): Burks has been a disaster since being drafted in the first round in 2022. His size and speed had the Titans thinking they could replace A.J. Brown on the cheap, and in two seasons he’s battled injuries, failed to even put up a 450-yard season, and scored one touchdown in 22 games. Now he’s getting involved on special teams, which might be great for the team, but indicates he’s not being prioritized in the offense as a primary pass-catcher. Ignore.