Sounds like trading away the top pick in the 2016 NFL Draft won't be enough to satisfy Jon Robinson. The first-year Tennessee Titans GM was part of a deal that shocked the NFL world on Thursday morning, as the Titans and the Los Angeles Rams announced a blockbuster trade that saw the first-overall pick shipped to the Rams, along with fourth- and sixth-round picks, in exchange for the 15th-overall pick, two second-rounders and a third-round pick this year, as well as first- and third-round picks in 2017.
If you're keeping count at home, that's nine picks that changed hands in one fell swoop. And it's a trade that immediately changes the landscape of the upcoming draft.
But while the Titans and Robinson now hold six selections among the draft's first 76 picks - the most of any team in the league - and seem likely to sit tight and do whatever damage they choose to with the selections already in hand, Robinson sounds like a guy willing to keep wheeling and dealing in order to land the right kind of players in Tennessee.
"This move does not knock us out of any player, except one,'' Robinson said. "We now have the ammunition to work the draft and acquire players that are going to be good for this football team."
Falling back to 15 takes the Titans out of range of the "elite" players set to be available later this month. Most draft analysts feel there is a big drop off after the first 8-10 players, and that the area thereafter, from the middle of the first round down almost to the third, offers a lot of, if not necessarily the same, but similar value.
Robinson knew when he took the helm of the franchise this offseason that the Titans weren't one player away from contention. Moving out of the first pick and adding extra capital, assuming there was a team willing to offer a competitive - or, as it turns out, almost excessive - package was probably tops on his to-do list.
Pulling it off while keeping the Titans within striking distance of the top players in the draft was a coup.
And that's why Robinson's words following the trade, cryptic though they may seem, should be heeded.
That excess draft ammo - especially the 2017 picks and the extra second-rounders - provide Robinson with plenty of leverage to move back up and target a player that will help to protect Titans franchise quarterback Marcus Mariota. Perhaps a player like Ronnie Stanley or Jack Conklin.
In the end, the Titans, as Robinson noted, really aren't out on any player but whomever the Rams select.
And while Laremy Tunsil would have been a nice selection and filled an immediate need, the extra picks - and the added benefit of pushing at least one, maybe two non-quarterbacks further down the board - is an absolute master stroke that allows Robinson and the team to do, well, pretty much whatever they want.
