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Learn more at vertexinck.com. This is the athletic football show.

Welcome to the athletic football show.

I'm Robert Mays.

Great show for you guys today.

We have our mailbag with Mitchell Schwartz coming a little bit later in the show, but we had some news yesterday that we had to address. So Joe Rex Road, who covers the Titans for us here at the Athletic, is going to join us to discuss DeAndre Hopkins signing a two-year contract with Tennessee, what this means for what the Titans are trying to accomplish in the short term, what they're trying to accomplish in the long term. I think it's a really interesting decision

based on kind of the different pathways the Titans could have followed coming into this year.

We did an entire podcast, Nate and I, back in the spring, about what we would do with the Titans

who kind of felt like a blank slate in certain ways as they could move

on from Ryan Tannenhill as they had a new general manager coming in. They were almost an

exercise and, you know, the different divergent paths the team could take. And everything they've done

this offseason kind of punctuated by this DeAndre Hopkins move, I think tells you exactly

what the Titans are trying to be in 2023 and maybe a little bit in 2024. So we're going to chat with Joe and Mitch. Let's get to it. All right. Joining us now, Joe Rex Road, who covers the Titans for the athletic. Joe, very excited to get your thoughts on this. Big day, big piece of news for the Tennessee Titans today. They signed DeAndre Hopkins to a two-year, $26 million deal worth

up to $32 million in incentives. What are your initial thoughts on DeAndre Hopkins heading to Tennessee?

Well, I think the Titans were probably in the lead for a long time here. And I'd love to know

some of the other offers, but I'm going to guess that nothing came close to this. And look, they had to proceed this way. I mean, I think you can look back. I even go back to like draft, the last draft presser, you know, with Mike Vrable. Vrable in particular, Rancart thought I had Mike Grable, but, you know, they had gone through the draft and free agency. You know, they basically picked up Chris Moore and they got, you know, Colton Dowell in the seventh round, but it was somewhat stunning for a team with a receiver room like theirs to do as little as they did. And Vrable, some people took it as a promise. I didn't take it quite that strong, but he kind of said,

we got, we're going to figure this out. You look back at what he said that day and you,

and you kind of have the sense that this was the plan all along. And it makes sense. Obviously,

Vrable spent four years with him there. And although Titans fans have a long list of formerly great players who then came here

...