Titans cornerback Cortland Finnegan will test free agency after the team declined to use the franchise tag on him today, and Finnegan said he’s sure he’ll leave because the team doesn’t want him.
“It is bittersweet,” Finnegan told Jim Wyatt of the Tennessean. “For six years I played in the Titans organization. I am grateful and humbled that the Titans took a chance on me and the way they matured me over the years. But I understand it is a business. My ultimate goal was to retire [in Tennessee], but I can’t control that. They wanted to move on, honestly. I don’t know why, and I don’t know what else a guy could do career-wise and in the community.”
The Titans took Finnegan in the seventh round of the 2006 NFL draft and he has developed into a consistent starter in their secondary, but he and the Titans didn’t see eye to eye on what kind of contract he deserved. Finnegan’s camp has suggested that he deserves to make $10 million a year, and the Titans aren’t looking to offer him that much.
In fact, Finnegan said that the Titans aren’t looking to offer him anything.
“The Titans told us they were not going to offer us a deal this year, so that is pretty black and white to me,” Finnegan said. “They didn’t franchise me and they could have and they told us they weren’t going to offer us a deal. So this is all on the Titans.”
Although Finnegan said he knows it’s a business, he also comes across as though his feelings are hurt.
“It just baffles me that we never got anything from them,” he said. “I don’t know what I did to turn them off on me. I felt I did everything I could do. But everyone moves on, it is a business.”
Now Finnegan will turn his attention to the business side of things and look to sign a lucrative contract elsewhere.