Mel Kiper says the weirdest thing about the Tennessee Titans in latest mock draft

There is a lot of nonsense this time of year where people who don’t know much about the Tennessee Titans are forced to pretend like they do.

It really seems like that was the case recently when Mel Kiper had the strangest comment in his new 2022 NFL Mock Draft.

You can click the link above to see exactly how that draft unfolds, but the Tennessee Titans end up taking wide receiver Jahan Dotson in the first round. Now, that is a good pick for the Titans because one of the focuses of this offseason will be finding someone who can help make life easier for Ryan Tannehill.

A.J. Brown has been dominant since being drafted in that amazing 2019 draft class, but he has struggled with injuries over the past two seasons. Meanwhile, Julio Jones is going to have to convince the coaches and front office that he is worth the money he is being paid this season. Dotson is one of the fastest receivers in the draft class which means that he could be a factor when the top two receivers are healthy.

If/When one of those two gets hurt, Dotson has shown enough to warrant a chance as a true WR2 so it just means that Tennessee Titans fans will see fewer snaps for guys like Nick Westbrook Ikhine and Cam Batson.

The problem is, his analysis of the pick includes this strange, tacked-on paragraph:

Why is this weird for the Tennessee Titans?

The reason this is weird is that he slips this in like this is a sleeper to watch out for, but it doesn’t make any sense to match him with the Titans.

First of all, it isn’t like this is the only late first-round pick where he mocked a receiver to a team. There were receivers drafted with the 23rd pick in this draft and the 28th pick in this draft, and neither place mentions Calvin Austin as a late first-round possibility.

The second weird thing is that Austin isn’t even close to what the Tennessee Titans like to draft in the first round. More than anything, the Tennessee Titans like to take swings on big players in the first round.

Jack Conklin, Corey Davis, Jeffery Simmons, Isaiah Wilson, Caleb Farley, look at the list of first-round picks and you will see a list of players who are physically imposing. Jahan Dotson would be small for them and he is going to be three or four inches taller than Calvin Austin.

Pure speculation here, but it definitely seems like Mel Kiper came into this draft knowing that he was going to have Alabama wide receiver Jameson Williams matched up with the Green Bay Packers. So much so that his analysis on the pick was already written up before he decided who he wanted the Tennessee Titans to take.

That is why Austin gets brought up with the Titans’ pick despite not fitting anything they are interested in and Tennessee Titans fans should keep that in mind in the future when they are looking at mock drafts like this.

Some big-name draft writers often pick five or six prospects and teams that they want to match up and then go through the process of building their mock drafts around those predetermined picks. All the more reason to take them with a grain of salt or outright dismiss them when they don’t pass the smell test.