19 at 19: Players the Tennessee Titans should consider in the 2019 NFL Draft
By Will Lomas
What the Tennessee Titans board should look like in the first round of the 2019 NFL Draft.
This isn’t real, because the Tennessee Titans are going to watch and grade every single player in the 2019 NFL Draft.
However, the Titans aren’t going to just grab the player with the highest grade on their board at 19. In fact, there is no team in the NFL that will do that despite what people say about “BPA” drafting.
The Arizona Cardinals may (and should) have Nick Bosa graded higher than Kyler Murray as a pure player, and Quinnen Williams ahead of both of them. However, that doesn’t chance the fact that they almost certainly aren’t drafting Williams first and it seems more and more likely that they may actually draft the QB in the first.
Teams draft for need and if they don’t they watch their talent sit on the sideline as they lose games to teams that did draft for need.
Have we really forgotten all the “BPA” picks from last year’s draft? These are players that I don’t think were in line for a starting spot when they were drafted, but they were “safe” and “too talented to pass up.”
-Hayden Hurst TE, Baltimore Ravens (290 snaps, 13 receptions, 163 yards,1 TD)
-Taven Bryan DT, Jacksonville Jaguars (301 snaps, 2 sacks)
-Mike Hughes CB, Minnesota Vikings (244 snaps, 1 INT, 2 TDs allowed, 75% completion percentage allowed)
All of these picks happened later in the draft and they were generally praised as great value picks. However, looking back do any of us think these teams made the right moves with these picks? There weren’t players out there at need positions that could have made a bigger impact?
The Ravens passed on Calvin Ridley, the Jaguars passed on Lamar Jackson and the Vikings passed on Will Hernandez. All of those players were also considered 1st round players who were at positions of need, but the other teams got too cute and look at what happened next.
So, this idea of BPA is great in theory but it rarely works as well as people think it does.
With that in mind, it is time to consider something that we don’t often talk about: a horizontal draft board.
What that means is instead of breaking down players in a straight line from 1-300, you break them down position by position and give them “round” grades and order them vertically after that.
The Titans own the 19th pick in the 2019 NFL Draft and while they likely won’t pick there, these are the 19 players that I believe they should consider with that pick.