Here’s one of the more realistic mock drafts Tennessee Titans fans will find.
The Tennessee Titans aren’t an open book when it comes to their game plan for any NFL Draft. In fact, up until recently, it has been very hard for prognosticators to get a read on the front office and their plans each offseason.
Still, if you are successful long enough then people will start to figure out trends in your behavior. Make no mistake, Jon Robinson has been one of the best general managers in the NFL since taking over and the Titans have the stats to prove it.
Since Robinson’s reign started in Tennessee, the Titans have had five-straight winning seasons. They’re one of only three teams who can say that, and all of that came even though Robinson took over a team that was 5-27 in two seasons before he got the job.
This is a team that ran through two head coaches, two starting quarterbacks, three offensive coordinators, and three defensive coordinators. The reason that Robinson has been so successful is that he has consistently added talent in free agency and the draft.
Has he been perfect? No, but no one has. In recent history, golden boys like Chris Ballard passed on A.J. Brown three times to take Rock Ya-Sin, Ben Banogu, and Parris Campbell. Kevin Colbert spent a first-round pick on Terrell Edmunds with Nick Chubb, Darius Leonard, Cortland Sutton, and Harold Landry on the board.
The list goes on, but this isn’t about other GMs. This is about what the Tennessee Titans are going to do in the 2021 NFL Draft. I’m going to go through pick-by-pick and explain exactly what the Titans are going to do and why they are going to do it.
The Tennessee Titans select Christian Barmore in Round 1.
The trend: The Tennessee Titans have spent three straight first-round picks on SEC players, so there’s no reason to believe they’d steer clear of that trend here. While they might begin to reconsider this after Isaiah Wilson, the great returns they have gotten from other SEC talent like Jeffery Simmons, A.J. Brown, and Derrick Henry are enough to stick with what has worked (most of the time).
Jon Robinson and Mike Vrabel were both at Christian Barmore‘s Pro Day in Alabama, so while no one has reported an ‘official visit”, the Titans’ top brass have been around him in the past.
This trend didn’t have any impact on this selection, but it should be noted that the Titans have this incredibly weird habit of spending a fifth-round pick on a position, only to draft that same position in the first round of the following draft. Here are a few examples:
2016: Tajae Sharpe, 2017: Corey Davis
2016: LeShaun Sims, 2017: Adoree Jackson
2017: Jayon Brown, 2018: Rashaan Evans
It doesn’t happen often, but once was because Jeffery Simmons fell in their laps and the other was Isaiah Wilson. This pick would push them back into this trend since their 2020 fifth-round selection was Larrell Murchison.
Here’s some analysis for that first Tennessee Titans selection.
People are probably going to be upset that the first pick isn’t a corner or wide receiver, but you have to remember what this team has been building this offseason.
On defense, they have been trying to build a unit that can get to the quarterback with as few people as possible. Now, the base package is probably going to involve Bud Dupree, Harold Landry, Denico Autry, and Jeffery Simmons.
The problem is this. The Titans have been a team more willing to put three defensive tackles on the field than two edge rushers. Jack Crawford was a prime example of that last season because he played 30-plus snaps in 11 of his 16 regular-season games.
Crawford is a defensive tackle by trade, but for the Titans, he played a lot of five-technique on the opposite side of Harold Landry and outside of Jeffery Simmons and DaQuan Jones.
In 2021, the Titans defense will have two different looks, a typical 4-2-5 scheme and an over front with three defensive linemen, one edge rusher, two off-ball linebackers, and five defensive backs.
The projected starters on the line of scrimmage would be Harold Landry, Bud Dupree, Jeffery Simmons, Christian Barmore (with Autry rotating in) in the 4-2-5. In an over front, Bud Dupree, Jeffery Simmons, Christian Barmore, Denico Autry (with Landry as a stand-up linebacker) figure to get the most snaps
Barmore is one of the few players in this draft class that can start in both looks and his SEC pedigree and production make him a perfect fit for the Titans.
Dyami Brown is the Tennessee Titans selection in Round 2.
The trend: It’s hard to imagine a trend that has a longer history than Jon Robinson’s love of the SEC at the top of the draft, but there is one rule above all rules with Robinson. That is the Matias Wodner Rule and to this point, it has been infallible.
That rule is:
"For those unfamiliar, the Matias Wodner rule is that every receiver Jon Robinson spends a draft pick on MUST have two or more 1,000-yard seasons. Looking back from 2014-2019 there are only 39 players with 2+ 1,000 yard seasons, so just under 8 receivers per draft class. Robinson has drafted four of those receivers (Corey Davis, A.J. Brown, Tajae Sharpe, and Taywan Taylor) and those are the only receivers he has spent draft picks on. At this point, you can doubt whether it is mandatory for a college receiver to produce like that, but it is definitely a strong preference."
Dyami Brown is one of five wide receivers in this draft class that passes that filter. Almost as important as that, Brown played under the same OC who was the OC at Ole Miss when the Titans drafted A.J. Brown. That means that they have already seen that this scheme produces receivers whose production isn’t inflated by a gimmicky system.
Analysis: The Tennessee Titans need a receiver and it is going to be very hard for Robinson to not make a move up for Brown given how much he fits what the Titans like in a prospect. The three receivers that the Titans are most likely to draft this year are DeVonta Smith, Elijah Moore, and Dyami Brown.
The latter’s ability to threaten defenses deep is going to be something that the Titans covet on top of his consistency and production at the college level.
The Tennessee Titans trade up!
With the 66th pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, the Tennessee Titans select Payton Turner, an edge rusher out of Houston. They give up picks 100 and 126 in the process.
The Trend: This pick combines two trends that the Titans have been incredibly consistent with, the first being that they just don’t draft players in the fourth round. In five years, Robinson has traded his fourth-round pick five times (twice in 2016, once in 2017, once in 2018, and once in 2019).
The other trend is that the Titans like to use the third round to get guys from non-Power Five schools. Nate Davis, Taywan Taylor, Kevin Byard, and Jonnu Smith were all from Conference USA and Darrynton Evans was from the Sun Belt.
Payton Turner would be the first player taken from the AAC, but since the Titans have already had a visit with him, you can imagine that they might be targetting their first player from the American Athletic Conference.
Analysis: Like Denico Autry, Turner is a six-foot-five, 270-plus-pound defender that you could line up inside or outside in every situation. Also like Autry, Turner is an aggressive player in the trenches whose effort and length make life miserable for opposing quarterbacks.
Turner ended his career with 25 TFLs and ten sacks over 27 starts, but the trend to watch is his improvement every season. By the time he earned the captain’s C on his chest in his final season, he had just started to hit his stride:
2018: 0.4 TFLs per game, 0 sacks per game
2019: 0.67 TFLs per game, 0.3 sacks per game
2020: 2.1 TFLs per game, 1 sack per game
Take an ascending player like that and put him with someone similar who has figured it all out at the NFL level (Autry) and now you have a pipeline in place for producing exceptional defensive linemen.
With the 85th pick, the Tennessee Titans select Tommy Tremble.
The Trend: This could be considered as cheating seeing as how Notre Dame is independent, but either way, Tremble’s selection supports the statement that Robinson normally takes non-Power-5 players in the third round.
Analysis: Tommy Tremble is someone that Titans fans are probably pretty familiar with if they have been following the draft buzz on Twitter in recent months.
The Notre Dame tight end has visited with the Titans, and he feels like someone that the front office would love. The tricky part in that is the fact that the Titans have only drafted one tight end under Jon Robinson, so it is questionable how much they believe that position is worth from a draft standpoint.
Having said all that, Tremble is the type of gritty, do-it-all tight ends that can add value to the Tennessee Titans running game and the passing game, so it isn’t hard to see why he might be one of the few exceptional tight ends that the Titans might look at (much like Jonnu Smith in 2017).
The Tennessee Titans select Ambry Thomas at 166.
The trend: If the Titans are looking to bolster their cornerback room, then Ambry Thomas, formerly of the Michigan Wolverines is a selection that makes a lot of sense for them.
This is another player who hasn’t been named as being a part of an official visit (or at least one whose visit hasn’t been reported yet), but Jon Robinson was at Michigan’s Pro Day so he got some hands-on experience with Ambry Thomas already during the offseason.
Analysis: Tennessee’s defense has put a premium on getting to the quarterback with their front four or five. Naturally, that devalues the players in coverage because you are expecting that the pass rush forces the ball out quickly, so you ask the defensive backs to do less.
So while everyone thinks that cornerback is a top need for the Titans, fans should expect that they are comfortable with starting Kristian Fulton and Jackrabbit Jenkins this year.
Still, there are so many bodies that need to be replaced in the secondary, Thomas combined value with need. He’s a good athlete with only one year of tape, but his most attractive quality may be that he (like so many other Day 3 defensive backs before him) has a history on special teams and is going to be able to suit up on Sundays without taking a spot from a high-end role player.
With the 205th pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, the Tennessee Titans select…Michael Strachan WR, Charleston
The Trend: Again, receivers probably won’t be included in any Titan Sized mock draft unless they pass the Matias Wodner Rule. It’s hard to find because Charleston isn’t a Division-1 school, but Strachan did pass the filter becoming the first player in school history to have 1,000-plus receiving yards, and he did it twice.
Analysis: Our staff consists of huge Charleston fans, so they’ve watched every snap of Strachan’s career. No, obviously that’s a joke, but even if you haven’t seen anything other than limited film and his athletic testing, it is easy to see how this pick could be a steal.
At six-foot-five, he is one of the tallest receivers in this draft class and despite weighing nearly 230 pounds, the former track star posted a 4.5-second 40-yard dash. If you are going to take a small school player, you want them to have either elite athleticism or eye-popping production and Strachan has both.
So far the Titans have added Dyami Brown which means that their WR depth chart looks like this:
1. A.J. Brown
2. Dyami Brown
3. Josh Reynolds
4. Anthony Firkser/Nick Westbrook-Ikhine
Even if you are confident in that lineup, this gives the Tennessee Titans another body at the bottom of this depth chart and a prospect who has the tools and resume to be an outlier.
One final thing to remember is that A.J. Brown and Dyami Brown are both six-foot, and while Josh Reynolds is 6’3, he is on a one-year contract. If the Titans want a bigger body on the outside or at the point in bunch formations, then this is a nice option to diversify their body types without Corey Davis.
The Tennessee Titans select UCF’s star tight end at 215.
The Trend: There isn’t a strong trend here because the Titans have had four sixth-round selections in the Jon Robinson era and they were Sebastian Tretola, Corey Levin, Luke Falk, and David Long.
That is sort of a scattershot pattern, and the common denominator is that this is the range where the Titans start letting their scouts make strong pushes for guys that they like. Since Jacob Harris has had a visit with the Titans, it’s safe to assume that the scout involved in that area must be interested enough in Harris that he is willing to push for him.
Analysis: There is a discussion on whether Harris is a tight end or a receiver, but the beauty of that is that the Titans know exactly how to use a player with that positionless mindset.
If he can be developed as a blocker, the Titans could try to get him on the Jonnu Smith, Darren Waller plan and aim for him to become a starter in the next few years. If not, then he can still be an Anthony Firkser type player with more athleticism.
Either way, this is another player who is a standout special teams player, so he can buy himself a spot on the roster and more time to grow into the player he should be on offense.
Larnell Coleman is the Tennessee Titans’ final selection at 232.
The Trend: As far as trends, there isn’t much to go on here, but the Titans have seemed fine drafting players from mid-sized or smaller schools in the seventh round. No one has cracked the code on what makes a seventh-round pick work, but historically the Titans have used those picks to fill out the depth chart.
One thing that’s working in Coleman’s favor is that he does seem like the type of player that is going to be popular as a UDFA if he makes it that far (coaches like him, he is athletic, he has NFL size). That combined with the visits that the Titans have had with him, put him on the radar here as a potential seventh-round choice.
Analysis: Last year, the Titans’ offensive tackle position was held together by journeymen, and hopefully that showed the front office that they don’t need to spend premium picks at offensive tackle to get premium results.
With Taylor Lewan, Kendall Lamm, Ty Sambrailo, and David Quessenberry already signed, it isn’t like the Titans need a ton of depth at the position. If they draft someone, it should be someone with an above-average starter upside, not just a guy who played a lot at a big school and whose best quality is that he has a decent floor.
This is a six-foot-six offensive tackle with an 85-inch wingspan and good athleticism that just needs some time and good coaching. He’s definitely worth the pick here at 232.