The Tennessee Titans made a rather polarizing decision on Thursday after they chose to re-sign wide receiver Nick Westbrook-Ikhine to a one-year deal.
This comes just one day after the team did not place a tender on the Indiana product. The Titans did make Westbrook-Ikhine an offer, but he chose to check out what the free-agent market had to offer first.
Well, it would appear that the open market wasn’t exactly blowing the former undrafted free agent away.
Rather than waiting and potentially risking his spot being filled, Westbrook-Ikhine ultimately decided to take the Titans’ offer and stay in Tennessee for another year.
There is no denying that the fourth-year veteran is a relatively solid receiver that has some real value on special teams. However, as of late, NWI has often been tasked with stepping into primary positions that he’s clearly not ready for.
The former Hoosier is best suited for a depth role on an offense as the fourth or fifth pass-catcher on the depth chart. If that is the role that Tennessee has planned for him, then this move is fine by me.
The exact amount for the recent agreement with NWI figures to be lower than the tender number that would have paid him around $2.6 million in 2023.
Coming in at a smaller number than that amount largely indicates that he should be destined for a smaller role, but we’ll have to wait and see how the rest of the offseason plays out to truly know if that will be the case.
It goes without saying at this point that it would be severely underwhelming if Tennessee’s idea of signing a starting-caliber wide receiver in free agency is just keeping Westbrook-Ikhine.
And that’s especially true when you consider the fact that the Titans claimed they wanted to get faster as a team, something that definitely isn’t a strength of the big-bodied wideout.
We’ll have to be a little more patient to get a definitive answer on that, so for now I can’t give this move anything more than an average grade.
Grade: C
