We can't make sense of the Tennessee Titans' Day 2 draft haul
The Tennessee Titans reached into their future Friday night and gave us a glimpse.
I'm beginning to fear for that future.
A quick summation of a perplexing Titans draft night: They traded up to take a risky swing on a backup quarterback in the second round. Then they took a backup running back with knee concerns in the third round, all the while neglecting to select a starting pass-catcher that they desperately needed.
A third-round pick in 2024: Gone.
All those Day 2 receivers and tight ends: Gone.
In return for Will Levis and Tyjae Spears, questionable picks at positions you didn't need.
Make it make sense, Ran Carthon — or Mike Vrabel. It’s hard to know who to ask these days.
“We want to take a look at the board,” Vrabel said, “see where things are, try to improve our football team. I’m going to speak for myself: I’m confident that we did that tonight.”
As for Carthon, the new GM didn’t read the room much better. He veered to an aside at one point in Friday night’s press conference, asking reporters to hold off on negative topics and questions out of respect for the fact that draft days were special for the players and their families.
Seriously? This is the NFL.
And how rough a draft night is it when it ends up there?
Let's start with Levis. Presumably, the Titans haven’t yet handed the franchise’s keys to him. Vrabel publicly backed Ryan Tannehill as the starter Friday night and said he spoke to Tannehill about the pick at the time.
But the Titans clearly telegraphed their intentions by trading up to draft the Kentucky quarterback a couple of picks into the second round. They boxed everyone out for Levis, though the entire league – the Titans included – revealed Thursday night that they didn’t want him all that much.
There was no bigger story in the 2023 NFL Draft’s first round than Levis’ slide.
And now, his story becomes the Titans’ story.
“I thought that it was going to go a little different,” Levis said. “But hey, I'm going to attack this opportunity with the most intensity that I have."
As a human being, of course, you had to be happy for Levis when the Titans did call. Those green-room scenes are always tough to watch. No one deserves that indignity.
But it wasn’t a mystery. Levis fell because he wasn’t great at Kentucky. He regressed from 2021 to 2022, and he threw 23 interceptions total in the two seasons. That’s why so many – including myself – couldn’t grasp why so many NFL draft experts thought so highly of him. He became this muscled caricature, personifying how the draft process can overhype players based on measurables instead of production.
“Our coaches are going to work their asses off to help him improve,” Carthon said of Levis, “and we think that he will improve.”
Levis can prove me – and a lot of others – wrong once he gets to Nashville and begins to “just put my head down and work,” as he said. But that hasn’t been his problem. His work ethic hasn’t been in question. Neither has his arm strength or size or toughness or leadership qualities or other intangibles.
On paper, Levis is a prototype of what you’d want in an NFL quarterback.
But on the field, it has often been his decision-making and lack of feel for playing the position. That rarely gets better in the NFL.
To be fair, there were excuses for Levis in 2022. As Kentucky coach Mark Stoops told NFL Network on Thursday morning, “A lot of that (in 2022) has to do with myself and our program and putting him in a position to be successful. … We had some things we needed to do better to surround him with some things.”
Levis played through a toe injury last season. Kentucky struggled to pass protect or catch throws.
“Kentucky was a much different football team in 2021 than what they were in 2022,” Vrabel said. “When he’s out there at whatever point, if we don’t protect him better than what it was (at Kentucky), it’s probably going to look the same, just like it is for every quarterback.”
Moving up to draft Levis in the second round was costly, but not as much as it would have been in the first round. You could make a case that the second-round lottery pick was a worthy play for the future if it wasn't for the expense to the current roster.
From the Levis pick at No. 33 to the Titans picking again at No. 81, eight wide receivers were taken. From Jonathan Mingo to Tennessee’s Jalin Hyatt and Cedric Tillman and North Carolina’s Josh Downs, my personal favorite who went to the Colts at No. 79. Then when the Titans were up again, they didn't take a receiver or a tight end.
Since they lack a fourth-round pick, it's likely they're going to be rolling the dice on a fifth-round selection to play meaningful minutes.
Plenty of quarterbacks, though. Malik Willis is still around, too. Could he play receiver?
And hey, when you think about it, Tannehill actually did play receiver in college, which means he's probably one of the best receivers on the Titans.
I wish I were kidding about that.
After this draft night, I’d imagine Tannehill does, too.