As much as the NFL has been flush with cash over the last decade, leading to annual increases in the salary caps of teams, the uncertainty of what the 2020 season will bring in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic could change things — and that change could impact the Tennessee Titans right away.
Should the league lose a significant amount of revenue because of Covid-19, the salary cap could decrease by anywhere from $30 to $80 million in 2021, as ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported back in May.
And that possibility isn’t lost on Titans general manager Jon Robinson, who says that the league’s uncertain future could stop the team from handing out contract extensions prior to the 2020 campaign, per Paul Kuharsky.
“I’m a big analogy guy. It’s no different than if I was if I was working for Pepsi or Coke, and I knew that we weren’t going to have as many sales. …You wouldn’t go out and buy a new house,” Robinson explained.
“I don’t know what that’s going to look like. It’s something that we will certainly talk about. You know, we’ve talked to the players and the reps. There’s a lot of uncertainty right now with everything, and I would say certainly with the salary cap too, because we’ve got to be mindful,” Robinson admitted. “What you don’t want to do is do something and then you’ve got to undo it or try to unpack it a year, two years from now, given the uncertainty of the salary cap.”
Right off the bat, the extension you think about being impacted first is that of Derrick Henry, which is still being negotiated and must happen before July 15 or else he’ll have to play the 2020 campaign on the franchise tag.
But there are other extension decisions looming for Tennessee, with tight end Jonnu Smith and inside linebacker Jayon Brown being the most important. Both players are in the final year of their rookie deals and will hit the open market in 2021 if no agreement is reached beforehand.
Last year, the Titans handed out a pair of extensions before the 2019 season to safety Kevin Byard and center Ben Jones.
