One of the few tight ends the Tennessee Titans should consider drafting if worst comes to worst.
The Tennessee Titans need skill position help, but with the depth of this draft it is hardly the first choice I would make with the 19th pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.
Over the next few weeks you are going to hear that this is a defensive heavy draft, and that is absolutely correct. The teams that have offensive needs in the top-10 are either going to have to reach or those problems will be there opening day.
When making my list of the best choices the Titans could make I did include trade up scenarios, but we aren’t there yet. Now we are in the part of the draft where the Titans would have to sit and pick or possibly even trade down a few spots.
These bottom five or so picks are the best choices in bad situations. Players that aren’t ideal and don’t always fit a need, but they are good players who could help this team.
Once again, these are the rules on I set when I was making my list:
-Nick Bosa, Quinnen Williams and Josh Allen will be gone barring a huge 1st round trade that is nearly impossible to imagine. They can’t be included in this list.
-Which of the players available specifically make the Tennessee Titans better.
-Don’t treat this as a big board, some positions won’t be brought up because there is no one talented enough that can come in and be an instant improvement over what the Titans already have.
-While long term help is important, consider what this player does for Tennessee short term and if they will help reduce the hit of free agent departures in the future.
Which player is the 18th best option for the Tennessee Titans in the 1st round?
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Noah Fant TE, Iowa
The “other” tight end from Iowa, Noah Fant was the consensus TE1 in this class for months and months throughout the season. However, when people looked it wasn’t Fant who was the most complete tight end on the roster it was T.J. Hockenson.
Since then, Fant has sort of been the forgotten man in this class. People see his name and gloss over him, but he has a chance to actually be the better fit for the modern NFL.
Sure, he isn’t going to be an elite blocker but he is functionally strong and is going to be fine at the next level. In NFL, you don’t really need inline blocking tight ends as much as people think. You can line a tight end off of the formation and use him to come down and crack block linebackers and EDGEs.
He isn’t going to be able to play fullback for you consistently, but that is about where his “negatives” end.
On the positive side, he is one of the most athletic tight ends in recent memory and he plays like it. He is a mismatch physically with nearly every defender that covers him and on any other team in the country he would be the top tight end if not the top playmaker.
I think he is a better version of Evan Engram. Look at his combine next to Engrams:
-Noah Fant: 6’4, 249 lb., 4.5s 40 yard dash, 39.5 vert, 127 broad, and 6.81 3-cone
-Evan Engram: 6’3, 234 lb., 4.42s 40 yard dash, 36 vert, 125 broad, and 6.92 3-cone
So Fant is basically bigger and more explosive than Engram even though he may just have great deep speed instead of elite deep speed.
On top of that, he has been very productive throughout his career in terms of market share so he isn’t a project.
When I boil it all down, Fant is an elite athlete at the tight end position who has some refinement to his game and comes from a system that wasn’t afraid to ask him to block. On paper, he is probably a top-10 player.
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However, I keep coming back to two things that make me nervous about drafting him.
Firstly, tight ends are historically a bad bet in the first round. The value you get from drafting other positions in the first round is just much more than you get from tight ends. Are you really going to pass up someone with the potential for 8+ sacks per year in exchange for someone who is (at best) going to give you 1,500 yards over the next three years.
Secondly, where is he going to play on this team? Next year, 4 of the 5 starting skill positions are already pretty much spoken for: Corey Davis, Delanie Walker, Adam Humphries, and Derrick Henry. The only position left is really for a boundary WR, and Fant isn’t going to fill that void.
If you are looking long term, well Humphries and Davis are here for the foreseeable future. At the tight end position, Jonnu Smith and Anthony Firkser aren’t elite prospects but they are both pretty solid and neither one is going to cost a first round pick.
I just don’t see the fit and while he will be an upgrade, it isn’t such a massive upgrade that I would put it in the top-15 of picks that the Titans should make in the first round.