Welcome to the AFC South version of Optimus Fantasy’s Team Previews! Today, we’re looking at the Tennessee Titans. In order to best know where we’re going, we often need to study where we’ve been. With that in mind, I will cover what the team looked like in 2024, fantasy significant changes to philosophy and personnel, and finally, I’ll cover what I expect from the team in 2025. Your fantasy drafts are coming. Stay ready, so you don’t have to get ready.

The Tennessee Titans in 2024

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Team Stats
PROE	-6.9 –
4th Down Go For It!	18.7
Target GINI	0.5652
Rushing GINI	0.7663
Plays/Game: Offense	60.7

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Let’s start off by defining a few things, shall we?

Note: Any stat highlighted green with a + means it’s significantly, at least one standard deviation, above average. Any stat highlighted red with a – means it’s significantly below average.

PROE – Pass Rate Over Expectation

2nd and 1 for the offense? Sure, it makes sense to run. 3rd and 12? Yup, absolutely reasonable to pass. PROE measures how often a team passes the ball when we would “expect” them to run. Such as on 2nd and 1. Obviously, this is our expectation, and part of the strategy is to do the unexpected. So it’s not a perfect encapsulation. However, over 17 games, this gives us a general idea of how an offensive coaching staff envisions their offensive strengths.

4th Down – Go For It! 

It’s kinda just what it sounds like. Unlike PROE, there’s no “expectation” to this stat. Of all 4th downs, this is how often a team chose to go for it. Higher rates mean an offense has more chances to accumulate fantasy points. Conversely, it’s not as great for kickers. 

Target GINI 

This is where my background in economics comes out. Without going too far down the rabbit hole, Target GINI is how concentrated a passing attack is among pass-catching targets. A Target GINI of 1 means every target went to one player. Perfectly evenly distributed targets among players result in a Target GINI of 0. 

Rushing GINI 

The same as Target GINI, but for rushing. So a Rushing GINI of 1 means one player had 100% of the rushing attempts. A Rushing GINI of 0 means every player received an equal number of rushing attempts.

“Ok, I get what GINI is, but how is it helpful for us?” You know, you’re really great with these questions. Are you sure you’re not a fantasy football expert? At any rate, these metrics tell us how concentrated or siloed a team’s passing and rushing attacks are. For fantasy, we’re looking for them both to be as close to 1 as possible.

Plays/Game: Offense 

Literally just what it sounds like, this is an average of how many plays per game a team’s offense runs. The idea is that more offensive plays equal more opportunities for our players to score fantasy points. Simple enough, right?

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Top Performers (HPPR 2024)
Will Levis	QB30
Tony Pollard	RB22
Tyjae Spears	RB42
Calvin Ridley	WR27
Nick Westbrook-Ikhine	WR46
DeAndre Hopkins	WR47
Chig Okonkwo	TE25
Nick Folk	K22

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Significant Offseason Changes from ’24 to ’25

Lost: Will Levis (injury/terrible), Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, DeAndre Hopkins, Nick Folk

Added: Cam Ward, Tyler Lockett, Joey Slye

At least they’re not running Will Levis/Mason Rudolph out there again and trying to tell us they’re legitimate NFL QBs. For an attempt to overhaul the offense, they sure didn’t do a ton to support their rookie QB  outside of Day 3 picks. 

The offensive line had a metric crapton of money thrown at it this offseason for what I would call “middling” OL talent. The QB struggles got all the press, but the offensive line was just as bad. Hopefully, big performance follows the big money pumped into the offensive line or else it’s going to be another long year.

The Titans’ front office is unchanged from ’24 to ’25. Given the disaster that was ’24, I wouldn’t be shocked if the Titans make a midseason change in their coaching staff if they’re listless once again in ’25.

Looking Ahead to the Tennessee Titans in 2025

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Lou’s Confidence Level 1 – 5
Cam Ward (R)	2
Tony Pollard, Tyjae Spears	3
Calvin Ridley, Elic Ayomanor, Tyler Lockett	1
Chig Okonkwo	2
Joey Slye	3

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Lou’s 2025 HPPR Rankings
Cam Ward (R)	QB27
Tony Pollard	RB26
Tyjae Spears	RB44
Calvin Ridley	WR39
Elic Ayomanor (R)	WR74
Tyler Lockett	WR87
Chig Okonkwo	TE30
Joey Slye	–

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Week	Opponent	Expected W/L
1	@ Denver	L
2	Los Angeles Rams	L
3	Indianapolis	L
4	@ Houston	L
5	@ Arizona	L
6	@ Las Vegas	W
7	New England	L
8	@ Indianapolis	L
9	Los Angeles Chargers	L
10	BYE	–
11	Houston	L
12	Seattle	W
13	Jacksonville	W
14	@ Cleveland	L
15	@ San Francisco	L
16	Kansas City	L
17	New Orleans	W

Lou’s projected 2025 “fantasy season” record: 4-13

OK, Now For the Important (Non-Kicker) Colts

“Lou, you didn’t rank Joey Slye!” Very astute, and you are correct. I’m a big believer in saying, “I don’t know,” when someone asks me about things I’m ignorant about. I’m kicker-dumb. So if you’re here looking for insight on kickers, I’m very sorry. I don’t expect the Tennessee offense to be very good, and Slye is a decent kicker so that he might be OK, I guess? #analysis

This will probably sound like a downer of a column, and I’m not sorry. The Titans’ roster is in rough shape. It was a bad combination of really old and really young in ’24, and it takes more than one offseason to right the ship in those situations. Alarmingly, it looks like Tennessee may have exacerbated things by throwing their free agency dollars, a lot of them, at some veterans who are very long in the tooth. In particular, WR Tyler Lockett and OG Kevin Zeitler will both be playing prominent roles for the Titans this year.

Rookie QBs have spoiled fantasy players a bit lately.

In 2023, CJ Stroud electrified Houston’s fan base with his gunslinging. In 2024, Jayden Daniels set the bar at the pinnacle of the QB position, which masked fellow rookies Bo Nix and Caleb Williams holding their own. Unfortunately, I do not foresee similar success for 2025 rookie Cam Ward. For one, Ward doesn’t have the rushing or scrambling skills the ’24 rookies had, and he doesn’t have the precision or polish Stroud had as a rookie.

What’s more, the surrounding casts of pass-catchers, as well as the offensive line for Ward, are rough. It would be one thing if he had a stable of WRs like Nico Collins, Tank Dell, and Robert Woods, the way CJ Stroud did, or an offensive coordinator like Kliff Kingsbury. Well, he does have his Woods in Tyler Lockett, but that’s about it. 

If there’s any sort of silver lining to the Tennessee roster and season, it’s the RB room.

Tony Pollard and Tyjae Spears are one of the better RB duos in the NFL. Despite finishing as RB22 with 6 top 20 RB weeks in ’24, drafters are relatively overlooking Pollard in ’25. Maybe this is the year he falls off a cliff and Spears – finally – grabs the reins. However, the fantasy industry has been betting on that for a few years without success now. Pollard has the look of that unexciting RB2/3 that goes a lot later than he should and is just kinda “there” on the lower part of your roster, or shoring up your RB2 slot when you’ve stacked the rest of your team.

Despite my misgivings on the passing offense, be sure to take note of Chig Okonkwo and how he performs early in the season. Okonkwo is one of the few mismatch weapons on Tennessee, so if he’s getting consistent work and targets in the passing offense, you should snatch him up expeditiously despite my TE30 ranking.

If There is a League Winner In Tennessee, it’s…

Tyjae Spears (RB)

This is more of a “post-hype sleeper” than a true league winner, truth be told. With an ADP of RB41 right around the DST1 and QB17-18 in 1QB leagues, Spears isn’t exactly the definition of a late-season breakout or complete unknown. However, we saw Spears go off late last year –  in league-winning fashion! – as RB5 for Weeks 15-17.

In other words, he’s already done it once. 

Deep League Draft Target

It’s very difficult to recommend any Titans player as a late-round target. So often, these are WRs who are overlooked because of their age or perceived lack of opportunity. In Tennessee’s case, Tyler Lockett fits the mold perfectly. He’s “Done The Thing” for years and is definitely over the age cliff as he enters his age 32 season. He’s also slotted as the WR2 for the Tennessee offense, so he should see the field plenty. The rub comes from what I foresee as a bottom-5 offense in the NFL. All too often, the extended pieces of those offenses simply aren’t worth rostering.
With an ADP of 267 according to FantasyPros, you can often roster Lockett with a 22nd+ round draft pick. If not, the waiver wire itself.

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Lou Brunson is a Senior Analyst and THE social media brains for Optimus Fantasy. Find his dynasty stylings on right here and at draftbuddy.com.