A June Move for the Ages

Current Tennessee Titans general manager Jon Robinson has noted several times in recent weeks that the search for NFL players never stops.

This week, that process will intensify once again because Wednesday is the day (June 1) that several rules related to salary cap management change. Teams can lessen the immediate financial impact of releasing a player, which allows for more additions.

According to The33rdTeam.com, the Titans made one of the best June signings in NFL history. It came in 2005, when Floyd Reese was general manager, and it hardly made headlines at the time.

Tennessee added kicker Rob Bironas on June 21, 2005. It was a four-year deal for $2.432 million, per sptrac.com, and it kicked off (pun intended) one of the most successful tenures in franchise history.

The website, which features insights from former NFL front-office staffers and scouts, likened the impact of that move to those of such notable players as Deion Sanders (Washington, 2000), Jerry Rice (Oakland, 2001) and Gerald McCoy (Carolina, 2019).

Those, however, were veteran players who added something to those teams late in their careers. That was not the case with Bironas.

From The 33rd Team:

It’s rare to see a kicker mentioned in a list like this, but the late Rob Bironas finds himself here after he was able to find a home in the NFL with the Tennessee Titans in 2005. Bironas spent 9 years with the Titans where he made one Pro Bowl and one All-Pro team along with having a field goal percentage of 85.6% and having a long of 60 yards. Moreover, Bironas had an NFL record 8 field goals in one game during the 2007 season as well as the record for most points scored in a game that weren’t touchdowns (26). These records still stand today, and Bironas is still considered one of the better kickers the Titans have had in their history.

Bironas had the job from 2005 through 2013 and never missed a game. He led the NFL with 35 field goals in 2007 – when he was named an All-Pro and a Pro Bowler – and made more than 90 percent of his field goal attempts in back-to-back seasons (2010 and 2011). During that time, he made 85.7 percent of his field goal attempts (239 of 279), which is a franchise record.

Bironas is one of two players in franchise history with at least 1,000 points. His 1,032 left him just shy of Al Del Greco’s team record of 1,060. Three times he made 20 consecutive field goals, which tied another franchise record (Del Greco did it once) and over parts of 2009 and 2010 he set another franchise record when he made at least one field goal in 20 consecutive contests.

Before Bironas, the Titans had to make in-season additions at kicker in consecutive years. Once they got him, they were set at that spot for close to a decade.