Live 2024 NFL Draft grade: Tennessee Titans draft Texas NT T'Vondre Sweat

The Tennessee Titans got their guy on night one when they drafted Alabama tackle J.C. Latham to help fix the offensive line.

With the biggest need on the roster solved, the Titans had 24 hours to plan for what they were going to do with the 38th pick in the draft.

Heading into today there were plenty of threads linking the Tennessee Titans to a couple of players. Junior Colson the linebacker from Michigan was widely viewed as the top linebacker in this class and a guy who should come off the board quickly in the first round.

There was also a lot of smoke about Texas NT T'Vondre Sweat who looked like a lock to be drafted in the first two rounds before a DUI brought past character concerns to the surface. Interestingly enough, the Titans had Sweat in for a top-30 visit shortly after to clear up (or solidify) any character concerns that they might have had.

With both options available the Tennessee Titans decided that they were comfortable with the character concerns and they reached for another one of their guys.

What does this mean for the Tennessee Titans

This entire offseason the talk in the local media was that the Titans should seriously consider trading down from 7 or 38 to get more picks, but in the end, Ran Carthon decided that he was going to make sure that he got his guys regardless of what the value was.

When it comes to Sweat, he wasn't well-liked by many people in the draft media (see below):

Now this isn't a disaster for the Titans because he does make perfect sense for the defense in terms of a fit. He is going to be the big, fat (played at 380+ lb.) space-eater in the middle of the defense that eats up space and lets guys like Kenneth Murray make plays in the backfield.

However, in a draft where Tennessee had two picks in the top 100 picks, the Titans didn't get plus value with either of their picks and they didn't get any additional picks.

With J.C. Latham, I thought it was a reach and he was ranked outside the top-20 as often as he was inside the top-10. However, there wasn't a doubt that he was a first-round caliber player.

That was not the case with Sweat who was a reach inside the top-40. To make things worse from a value standpoint, the next three picks in the draft were all trade downs where the team that traded down either received multiple top-100 picks or a future 2nd-round pick.

Does Sweat fill a need? Yes, absolutely. I think that Sweat is the best two-down nose tackle in this draft class. The problem is just the character concerns, weight concerns, draft value for a team that doesn't have draft capital, and the value of a player who shouldn't be on the field on third downs.

Grade: D