Throughout the offseason, Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel and general manager Jon Robinson said on multiple occasions that the team planned on keeping wide receiver A.J. Brown for the long haul and wouldn’t trade him.
However, that didn’t come to fruition, as the Titans dealt their star receiver to the Philadelphia Eagles on Thursday night, and used one of the two picks they received in the trade to select Arkansas wideout, Treylon Burks.
After the trade went down, Robinson said the move was “a tough one” to make, but he felt the two sides were simply too far apart money-wise to make it work.
“The decision we made today, it was a tough one,” Robinson admitted, per Jim Wyatt of Titans Online. “We really appreciate what A.J. has done here for our football team, on the field and in the community. We had discussions back and forth and we realized we got to the point where it was going to be hard to get a deal done. So, the trade thing kind of manifested.”
“These are the decisions I am faced with, and they are hard decisions,” Robison continued. “There’s a lot of discussion that goes into them, a lot of thought that goes into them. At the end of the day, we have to make – I have to make – the hard decisions. And there’s a lot of things that impact those decisions. Certainly, the finances impact the decisions and trying to get value when we can. And that’s the decision we made today.”
Brown ended up landing a four-year, $100 million deal from the Eagles after being dealt there. An Instagram Live video that surfaced last week revealed Tennessee’s offer was for $20 million per.
Vrabel, who previously stated Brown wouldn’t be traded as long as he was head coach, says he’s “very comfortable” with the move the Titans made.
“I love all of our players – I love A.J. personally,” Vrabel said. “I know how Jon feels about him. But I am very comfortable with how this went down and how Jon and I were able to navigate. I try to support him and make decisions. Unfortunately, we understand if we are going to be here a while, we are not going to be able to keep every single player that we draft and develop.”
Now, the Titans will look to fill a gaping hole in their offense with a rookie wideout who is not guaranteed to be ready to fill Brown’s enormous shoes. Only time will tell how good or bad of a decision this trade truly was, but right now it feels like a bad one.
