INDIANAPOLIS — NFL Quiz. Jon Robinson is:
a. The Falcons long-snapper.
b. The Vikings salary-cap manager.
c. An equipment man for the Buccaneers.
d. The NFL Scouting Combine’s director of operations.
e. The man holding the first pick in the 2016 draft.
Guess I’m a bad quiz-giver. The first four wouldn’t be of much interest right now. The new GM of the Titans, Robinson, 40, was born and raised in the western Tennessee metropolis of Troy (pop. 760), a one-blinking-red-light burb near the borders of Kentucky, Missouri and Arkansas. Robinson nearly died twice as a child because of kidney failure, grew up baling hay on a farm and rooting for the Danny White Cowboys and played college football at Southeast Missouri. He got his big break in the business at 26, when he got hired to be a southeastern scout with the then-Super Bowl champion Patriots.
And now he’s got eight weeks to decide whose name gets picked first in the draft as he tries to turn around his home-state team. In a hour-long conversation over coffee in the Westin Hotel here about his life and goals for the Titans, Robinson sat at a side table just off the bustling lobby wearing a white Titans cap. Times recognized: zero.
“That’s the way I like it,” he said. “It’s never about me. It’s about what we can accomplish as a team.”
There certainly is a lot of work to do. The Titans are 5-27 in the past two years. They seem to have a franchise quarterback in Marcus Mariota, but they need help at tackle—they allowed the most sacks in football last year—and at pass-rusher and in the secondary. Lots of help. In this draft, there’s a tailor-made pick sitting there in Mississippi left tackle Laremy Tunsil, who appears to be quick enough to keep the speed-rushers mostly off Mariota for the next few years. But what Robinson really wants to do, unlikely as it seems today, is to create a buzz for the top pick, perhaps by encouraging those beneath him to leapfrog quarterback-needy Cleveland for one of the two top passers in the draft. There’s probably not enough excitement about quarterbacks Carson Wentz or Jared Goff being sure things to make that happen, but lots can change in two months. Players can rise and fall, and Robinson’s certainly going to try to create action around the pick.
“I’m going to be making a pretty impactful decision for the future of the franchise,” he said. “I’ve pondered the significance of the decision quite a bit. It’s big. I’m the kind of guy, when I walk the hallways of our building in Nashville, I get chill-bumps. It’s pretty cool to be working for the team in my home state. I’m a Tennessean, through and through. And I want to do something good for the people of Tennessee.” (continue reading)