Tennessee Titans ceiling and floor for 2023

Controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk fired former Tennessee Titans general manager Jon Robinson mid-season and replaced him first-time GM Ran Carthon to shake things up. 

Tennessee cut bait with several high-priced veterans, potentially drafted its quarterback of the future and will tentatively use the 2023 season to evaluate which players are worth keeping around for the “reset.” Here's our best guess at the best- and worst-case scenarios for the Titans in 2023:

Ceiling: 10-7

The Titans are one of the hardest teams in the NFL to get a read on considering their season hinges on a lot of yet-to-be-answered questions. Will Tennessee sign DeAndre Hopkins? Is Andre Dillard a legitimate starting left tackle? Is Derrick Henry still capable of a 1,000-yard season? However, assuming the answers to most of those questions are positive, the Titans could potentially be a playoff team in 2023. 

Tennessee has nine winnable games against non-division opponents including New Orleans, the Los Angeles Chargers, Cleveland, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Carolina, Miami and Seattle. (Complete schedule analysis here.) Being generous, the Titans could come out of those matchups with five or six wins.

Of their six division games, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find at least four wins there against two teams breaking in rookie QBs and another that has next to zero experience entering a season as a division favorite.

Floor: 5-12

While the Titans could be a playoff team, they could just as easily be drafting in the top 10 next season as well. Quarterback Ryan Tannehill could be replaced by rookie Will Levis at any point, the defense could regress after losing David Long Jr., Demarcus Walker, Zach Cunningham, Bud Dupree and Lonnie Johnson and Tim Kelly could be just as bad of an offensive coordinator as Todd Downing.

In this scenario, splitting with the Colts and Texans is likely, and a sweep at the hands of the Jaguars for the second year in a row is entirely plausible. The Titans other three wins likely come against Atlanta in Week 8, Tampa Bay in Week 10 and Carolina in Week 12. Games against New Orleans, Cleveland and Miami could be toss-ups, but all three have done more to improve during the offseason than Tennessee, which arguably got worse.