NFL Draft: The 29 players Tennessee Titans should consider in round one

28. Ross Blacklock DL, TCU

Like a lot of these lower-ranked names, these are all positions of needs but the fits just aren’t really there.

Blacklock is what Jon Robinson has always said he hated: a project that you have to spend a first round pick to acquire.

For all of the talk about his upside and tools, his resume has less than 6 sacks to his name for his entire career. This wouldn’t be terrible if he was a bigger guy who wins with power and focuses on stopping the run first, but that isn’t what Blacklock is.

At TCU Blacklock spent a lot of his time stunting and wasn’t really asked to hold up blocks which explains why he was allowed to play nose tackle at 290 lb.

Just to compare, Jeffery Simmons was a nose tackle at Mississippi State who was asked to do the things I just talked about which generally means that you are going to be less productive even if you are a good player. Let me show you exactly why Blacklock is so disappointing:

Ross Blacklock over his entire career (26 games): 15.5 TFLs, 5.5 sacks

Jeffery Simmons in his last 25 games in college: 29 TFLs, 7 sacks

And his athletic testing isn’t particularly impressive either. Even though he ran a 4.9 40-yard dash (which is actually great) his agility drills were all mediocre for a defensive tackle and (again) he did this at 290 lb.

Not only was he not productive and a mediocre athlete, but he had an Achilles injury that took him off of the field for all of 2018. So he is an injury risk on top of all of that.

This would be spending a first round pick on a backup whose production, testing and role wouldn’t even project to be an upgrade over what the Titans saw from Isaiah Mack last year.