The Tennessee Titans may have something with rookie safety Kevin Winston Jr. | Estes

NFL training camps, especially in these early days, can be deceptive to untrained eyes. Players will stand out for different reasons and on different plays. Coaches and teammates brag about seemingly everyone. Hype comes easy, merited or not.

But if you want to know which players are truly gaining ground in the pecking order, watch the field. Watch the reps and rotations in drills between offense and defense.

Who is out there practicing with a certain unit today, and he wasn’t yesterday? Who, in other words, is showing up more often — and in more places — than you expected?

At Tennessee Titans practices lately, that player has been rookie safety Kevin Winston Jr.

The Titans may have something with Winston, a third-round pick out of Penn State.

Yes, it's early. But there’s a buzz about him already, and it's obvious why. He’s playing fast. He’s around the football plenty. He doesn’t look like a rookie physically and he certainly doesn’t play like one who’s still learning and still recovering from a serious knee injury suffered in college. Winston wasn’t even sure he’d be able to practice full speed this quickly.

“I’m ahead of where I thought I would have been,” he said. “At this point, I thought I would be working back on the field, but I didn't think I would feel this good and be able to move this well.”

Winston had been viewed in NFL draft circles as a possible first-round pick if he hadn’t hurt his knee last season (ESPN called it a partially torn ACL). That injury hurt his draft stock, and it also meant that when the Titans took him on Day 2, it raised red flags. Nothing to do with Winston. It's just that the Titans notoriously have fared miserably when drafting injured players in recent years.

Winston didn’t participate in summer practices, but he stayed around the Titans’ facility to rehabilitate, keeping an eye on the 2025 season as he “attacked every day.”

“I wasn’t going to make an excuse for myself,” he said.

How refreshing. Excuses have become a specialty around this team the past few years.

And there's this: Safety happens to be one of the few positions that the rebuilding Titans could feel comfortable about entering this preseason. Veterans Amani Hooker and Xavier Woods are proven NFL starters and reliable options on the back end.

What’s so encouraging about Winston is that the Titans didn’t need him to step in immediately.

His working so hard to get back and make a strong push this preseason anyway — it might present the Titans with a wonderful roster problem. And it’s one this depth-challenged defense, frankly, could stand to have a lot more.

These Titans, like last season's Titans, appear to be banking on too many defensive players overachieving in order to fill pressing needs. See inside linebacker James Williams. Or cornerback Darrell Baker. At edge rusher, there’s Arden Key or Ali Gaye or Jaylen Harrell. The Titans have no choice but to hope these guys can somehow be more than they’ve been.

But with Winston, the Titans — for once — are looking for ways to get a promising player on the field.

Defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson told reporters the team is moving Winston “around a little bit, just trying to show his true abilities.”

At Penn State, Winston practiced some in the slot, he said. He mostly lined up among the back two safeties, but the idea of an additional position in Tennessee appeals to him: “I don't want to be centered to one spot and that be the only thing I can bring.”

Winston said he feels all the way back, health-wise. But he knows he isn’t. Not yet.

Precautions are still being taken. He exited practice early on Aug. 3, and a member of the Titans' staff indicated that had been the plan for Winston all along, rather than a sign of trouble.

Which indicates how closely the Titans are monitoring Winston's recovery. And they should be.

They've got a safety whose future is looking brighter by the day.

“He’s exactly what we thought he was and even more so,” Titans safeties coach Steve Jackson said. “He comes in early. He stays late. He asks all the right questions. I mean, he wants to know. He wants to be the best . . .

“I'm glad we got him.”

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social