Now, in excruciating detail, The Tennessean presents every signing the Tennessee Titans have made at inside linebacker since the team’s fortunes changed for the worse in November 2022, including draft picks, free agent signings, waiver claims, trades and practice squad claims or promotions:
Jack Gibbens. Zach Cunningham. Andre Smith. Luke Gifford. Azeez Al-Shaair. Ben Niemann. Otis Reese. Chance Campbell. Reese (again). Joe Jones. Campbell (again). Jones (again). Reese (again). JoJo Domann twice. Garret Wallow. Domann (again). Tae Crowder. Kenneth Murray II. Gibbens (again). Cedric Gray. James Williams. Mikel Jones. Ernest Jones IV. Gifford (three more times). Jerome Baker. Curtis Bolton. Raekwon McMillan. David Long (if he’d passed a physical). McMillan (again). Cody Barton. Curtis Jacobs. David Gbenda. Amari Burney. Anfernee Orji.
Sure, it’s not 1985 anymore. The necessity of having an every-down, do-it-all, game-changing middle linebacker has dipped with time. But that’s still an alarming amount of roster turnover for a team that has invested big money, trade assets or a premium draft pick into the position repeatedly with the likes of Long, Monty Rice, Al-Shaair, Murray, Jones, Gray and Williams and now Barton. And it’s even more alarming for a team that will head into training camp with only one starting inside linebacker spot settled.
“It’s something we’re focused on right now,” inside linebackers coach Frank Bush says of the competition alongside Barton, the third free agent add in as many years brought in to patrol the middle of the Titans’ defense. “We’re not just out here spinning our wheels. We’ve got to get some stuff done. We’ve got to make some strides. Cody’s done some good stuff, but there’s a question mark there of how are we going to fill that hole over there.”
Gray, a 2024 fourth-round pick, and Williams, a 2024 seventh-round pick, are the early leaders in the competition, according to Bush. But that has as much to do with seniority as anything. That is, of course, a wild thing to say about two second-year players who’ve logged a total of 159 combined career defensive snaps.
But when the rest of the room is filled with players like Jacobs, Burney and Orji who have spent about five combined months in the Titans’ organization, the advantage is real.
Gray and Williams both have taken first-team reps during OTAs, and both have spent most of their offseasons at the team’s facilities trying to get better. Each is still in an adjustment phase. Williams was a lifelong defensive back who converted to linebacker as a pro, and who had to put his linebacker development on pause for much of last season because of how many special teams roles he had to focus on. And while Gray has a linebacker background, he also missed a big chunk of training camp and the regular season rehabbing a shoulder injury.
“I feel like I’m growing and developing a lot,” Gray says. “I kind of missed half of the year last year, but coming in this year, there’s a lot of opportunity. So I’m just trying to take full advantage of it and just keep developing and bettering myself and my game.”
Reese, the longest-tenured Titans linebacker, returns for his third year and can factor into the competition as well, alongside undrafted rookie Gbenda and the trio of March and May waiver claims mentioned above. Barton, who’s on his fourth team in four years after 100-tackle seasons for Seattle, Washington and Denver, is penciled in as a starter, but the Titans’ lack of a true answer beside him is particularly distressing, given the team’s struggles stopping the run and the knack for allowing running backs to catch touchdowns.
“We definitely have to be better there,” Titans coach Brian Callahan says of the run defense. “And that’s one of the things we went after. It was trying to find how do we get the most out of our front and how do we put ourselves in a better position than we did?”
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.