The Tennessee Titans released Jordan Elliott on Tuesday after an incident at the team facility five days earlier, ending his stay with the club almost as quickly as it began. Robert Saleh said Wednesday that the matter involved Elliott pulling a gun in the parking lot, a step Saleh called a terrible lapse in judgment.
The release came after Elliott had appeared in five games this season, making one start and recording 11 tackles. It also cut short a roster move the Titans made in the offseason, when they signed him to a two-year, $8 million deal after he followed Saleh to Nashville from the San Francisco 49ers.
Saleh did not frame the episode as a simple disciplinary case. He said he saw it more as a call for help than a criminal act, while also saying the team could not ignore the rule against guns on property. “Unfortunately, rules are rules with regard to guns on property, and sometimes it’s far greater than the knee-jerk reaction of kicking somebody when they’re down,” he said. “He’s a good man. Made a terrible, had a terrible lapse in judgment that I recognize as a call for help more than a criminal act.”
That is the part of the story that does not fit neatly with the release itself. Saleh said Elliott had never committed a crime and still pulled a gun in the parking lot, leaving the Titans with a violation they could not overlook even if they wanted to treat it as something else. The team had initially announced the release on Tuesday without explaining the incident, and there has been no public word on any further team action or legal outcome.
Elliott’s path to Tennessee was built on years as a rotational interior lineman, first with the Cleveland Browns after they selected him in the third round of the 2020 draft, then through 31 games and 29 starts over two seasons with San Francisco. Now the question is not what he was signed to do, but whether the incident that ended his tenure at the facility will lead anywhere beyond the roster move already made.
