12 Tennessee Titans players who would be at risk if the NFL decided to have another expansion draft

The Tennessee Titans head into 2024 as one of the most involved rebuilds in the NFL. Nearly half of the team has been turned over since 2024, so they’re working to put together all the pieces of their roster as we speak.

But what if there was a team in the league working with 100% new players ahead of the 2025 season?

Early this week, A to Z Sports' Wendell Ferreira will be sharing the results of his hypothetical NFL expansion draft. He’s putting together the 33rd team in the league, following a set of rules to pull from the roster of each established team around the country. Wendell will be including the team's name and the roster from which he got each of his new players in his article, so keep an eye out for it soon. Before that can happen, though, each team has to make players available to be drafted. So that’s what I did with the Titans below:

Hypothetical NFL Expansion Draft Rules

• Each current NFL team has to leave 12 players unprotected.
• Players with 0 or 1 accrued seasons are automatically protected and can't be on the list. Players with no-trade clauses also aren't eligible.
• If the player is selected, the expansion team will absorb both his future salaries and signing bonus prorations. The list is final, meaning that teams can't withdraw a player after another one has been selected.
• The expansion team can get a maximum of two players from each NFL team, and a maximum of 40 players total.

12 Unprotected Titans players

Offense

• QB Tim Boyle 
• WR Treylon Burks 
• WR Colton Dowell 
• RB Julius Chestnut 
• OT Jaelyn Duncan 
• IOL Chandler Brewer 
• IOL Brendan Jaimes 
• IOL Sam Mustipher 
• OL Olisaemeka Udoh

Nine of the twelve players I chose to leave unprotected ended up coming from the offensive side of the ball. The Titans have 4 QBs at the moment, and two of them are basically the minimum value a QB can have as an asset in the league. Brandon Allen seems like the guy the coaching staff probably likes more, so Tim Boyle gets the short end of the stick.

Tennessee has a heated WR competition, so I left off the two veteran names I frankly don’t see any path to making the roster this year. Dowell won’t surprise anybody, as he’s been injured and a special teamer for his career so far. Burks on the other hand is probably the most intriguing guy to make this list, and I won’t be surprised if the expansion team takes him. But as I wrote about in more detail here, it’s over for Treylon as a Titan. Why protect a guy you’re going to end up cutting in August?

The rest of the list includes guys who are getting pushed out of consideration for the Titans roster due to numbers. The Titans drafted a running back to round out their room this year, so Julius Chestnut is likely on the outs anyways. And these five linemen constitute the least upside that I see in a crowded OL race. Odds are, they wont be picked up and Bill Callahan can hang on to most/all of them anyways.

Defense

• LB Amari Burney
• EDGE Titus Leo
• DT Carlos Watkins

Only three defenders ended up unprotected when I scoured the Titans 91-man depth chart. Burney seems to be an odd-man-out in the heated ILB competition, as is Titus Leo on the defensive front. And Carlos Watkins may get picked up as a nice IDL depth piece, but he’s in a role that’s expendable for Tennessee.