Titans trade Taywan Taylor to Browns for 2020 seventh-round pick

The Titans have traded receiver Taywan Taylor to the Browns for a 2020 seventh-round pick.

Taylor’s tenure with the Titans has been a strange one. He made a good first impression as a rookie, earning some snaps at receiver throughout the season and making a few big plays, including a 53-yard touchdown against the Colts to help the Titans beat their tormentor for the first time in years.

His second season was less successful. The efficiency numbers were still strong, but he struggled with drops and seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time too often.

Training camp this year brought more of the same from Taylor before a terrible first preseason game landed him squarely in the crosshairs for Titans fans. With his confidence waning and players like Darius Jennings and Kalif Raymond offering more special teams ability, the team finally decided to move on.

It’s a curious decision to trade a player to your Week 1 opponent, but I’m interested to see what the compensation turns out to be. If the Browns were the highest bidder — or the only bidder — at some point you have to just take what you can get.

I do believe the Titans will miss Taylor’s ability to get behind the defense — maybe Kalif Raymond can help there, but we’ve never seen him do it against first team corners — but the writing was really on the wall for him the moment the team took A.J. Brown in the second round of the draft after spending big money to sign Adam Humphries the month before. If you’re happy with the progress of your former third round pick, you don’t go out and spend major capital on two new wide receivers.

The Titans more or less swapped Taylor for edge rusher Reggie Gilbert, sending their own seventh rounder away to the Packers and getting the Browns seventh back. Chances are Gilbert will contribute more than Taylor would have either way.