One quick thought on why Philip Rivers is worth the trade for the Tennessee Titans

There has been a lot of talk that the Tennessee Titans are in conversations with the San Diego Chargers about trading their second overall pick in exchange for Philip Rivers, their first round pick, and possibly another pick as high as the second round.

If that is the case, the Titans should jump on that trade, no questions asked. Many people say that the trade doesn't benefit the Titans for one reason or another, but why not?

In this trade, not only do the Titans get a top-eight quarterback, they get an identity. The Titans now have a leader in the locker room that believes in the gameplan that Ken Whisenhunt and his guys are trying to implement. Not only that, but now Zach Mettenberger can sit and wait and turn his potential into actual ability.

Cost

Some people say that Rivers will cost to much against the cap, my question is what are the Titans spending their money on that is so important that they can't add a playoff caliber quarterback? According to Overthecap.com, the Titans have $26.3 million in cap space just sitting around waiting to be used. Also according to OTC, Philip Rivers is the 15th highest paid quarterback in terms of annual contract with $15.3 million.

So hold on, you are telling me that a quarterback that is making less than Andy Dalton, Carson Palmer, Colin Kaepernick, Jay Cutler, Matt Stafford, and Eli Manning is making too much money for the Titans to afford? That just doesn't make any sense to me. At his current contract, Philip Rivers is likely the most undervalued quarterback aside from Andrew Luck and Tom Brady.

Age

I was on board with this being the major flaw with this trade, if there was one. That was, until I saw one tweet:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Philip Rivers is 4yrs younger than Tom Brady and 5+ yrs than Peyton Manning, so not necessarily a short-term fix for <a href="https://twitter.com/TennesseeTitans">@TennesseeTitans</a>.</p>&mdash; Phil Savage (@SeniorBowlPhil) <a href="https://twitter.com/SeniorBowlPhil/status/589485431164694528">April 18, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

So, you have a quarterback here without any major injuries that has played against the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos four times a year and has still led his team to the playoffs (or darn close) for a decade, and is still five or more years younger than Peyton Manning. Age really isn't that scare once you think of those two quarterbacks and what the NFL has done to protect quarterbacks.

That is my two cents on why I don't think there are any major flaws with the trade. Fans know he can play and they know that he would make this team instantly better. While they fear that his age and cap hit is restrictive, I really don't think that is as big of an issue as people believe. It will be interesting to see whether this trade really has legs in the coming weeks.