The Titans’ offseason workouts get underway a week from today, and one way or another, the team will likely make a move with Chris Johnson by that point, tweets Ian Rapoport of NFL.com. As Rapoport explains (via Twitter), the Titans haven’t released Johnson yet because he has drawn some trade interest, but that interest has to turn into something tangible within the next few days, or else the club will likely end up cutting the veteran running back.
While we haven’t heard much so far about teams with potential interest in Johnson, Rapoport reports (via Twitter) that the Jets may be in the mix. New York appears reluctant to jump into the hunt for DeSean Jackson, but the team has a “level of interest” in the Titans running back.
Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News (Twitter link) echoes Rapoport’s note on the Jets having a level of interest in Johnson, adding that the team has missed out on a pair of its running back targets already this month: Donald Brown and Maurice Jones-Drew. We knew the Jets were pursuing Jones-Drew, but the fact that Brown was the club’s No. 1 RB choice, as Mehta tweets, is new information. Sources told Mehta a week ago that GM John Idzik‘s “hard-line stance” cost the Jets their top running back target earlier in free agency and that the player had signed with another AFC team — I speculated that it might have been Ben Tate, but it seems it was Brown instead.
As for Johnson, while there may be other teams with interest in him, don’t expect him to land with the Falcons. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk reported yesterday that Atlanta isn’t a likely suitor for the former 2,000-yard rusher.