NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Final thoughts before the NFL Draft starts tonight with the Titans lined up at No. 7.

Here is what I would like to see unfold for them in order of preference.

1)    Trade back two to six picks for Olu Fashanu, LT, Penn State

Fashanu (pictured) is a premier pass protector with room to grow as a run blocker. He’s starting from snap one in training camp and Bill Callahan can have a very fast impact on rounding out his game. JC Latham would be the fallback. He’d get every chance to start out on the left side but might wind up on the right, and that would wind up a fail to me. 

Who’s the trader? Well, I started out playing with the chart and values there and was trying to balance things out with the calculator.

By ZACH LYONS, Stacking the Inbox

Mock Drafts are a fun way to pass the time from near the regular season’s end to the night of the draft. Hell, you will even see mock drafts predicting Day Two on Friday morning and Day Three on Saturday morning, then on Monday we will have 2025 Mock Drafts. They’re inescapable and inevitable. We all secretly do them at least once a week, even if we don’t post them. It’s fun, addictive, and mindless. Are they useful and informative? 

Meh, the draft is pretty tough to nail down to a science. So, they rarely provide accuracy, take the 33rd Team’s mock draft last year. They only got five first-round picks matched exactly to the team that drafted the player and were way off on even team-to-position matches. One of those five was Bryce Young, so, yeah, even former GMs and decision-makers are inaccurate with their mocks.

There’s just too much of a human element to the entire draft process. Various teams have various needs, and players fall because we, the people, don’t have all the necessary information to make informed decisions. So, I wanted to do something different with my mock draft, even straying away from my first-round mock draft and multiversal mock draft I did at StackingTheInbox.com.

First, I want to talk about the argument for drafting best player available. Why a team like the Titans were in a good position to do so but failed to do it. A “What If…” scenario. Then take a trip to the consensus board and look at what a best player available draft could look like for the Titans. Finally, for my final 7-round mock draft, I am going to go through each pick but talk about what the Titans wish would happen, what the preferred scenario is, what the realistic scenario is and what I think the pick will be.

Something a little different than you get everywhere including my other content, maybe, just maybe, I bring something fresh to the table.

Why Best Player Available Over Need

By MIKE HERNDON, columnist

We have finally made it! It’s draft week, and if you’re reading this it likely means we’re less than 48 hours away from the annual tradition of Roger Goodell getting booed and then putting the first team on the clock.

Here, we’ll attempt to predict what will happen shortly thereafter with my projected picks for all 32 teams as well as my picks for the Titans in all seven rounds with analysis. For the later round picks, I used Wide Left Football’s consensus big board and held myself to taking players ranked

within the appropriate range for that pick and considered players ranked more than 10 spots higher than the pick spot as “off the board” at that point.

This is meant to be predictive and not a “what I would do” mock draft, though I’ll offer my analysis for each pick, and what I might do instead as we go. We’ll knock out the full first round before we jump to just Titans picks after.

By BLAKE BEDDINGFIELD, columnist

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Titans have many needs left to fill out their roster for the 2024 season.

The most glaring issue is at left tackle. There isn’t a starting-caliber left tackle currently on the roster and the Titans have forced themselves into taking one in the first round after neglecting to touch it at all in free agency. I discussed that in my recent mock draft.

But they do not have to select one with their seventh overall pick, because of the depth of tackles in the draft this year.

The temptation to select one of the premier players instead of tackle would be risky.

The Titans need to come out of the draft with a starting tackle, another wide receiver because their top two are 30 years old, a tight end, an outside pass rusher, multiple defensive linemen, an inside linebacker with run/coverage skills, a safety and a corner.  The problem is they only have two picks in the top three rounds and other selections will fill depth and not expected to start. They’ve only got seven picks overall.

First round: Must be an immediate starter and impactful player if selected seventh overall.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – In talking to three people from other teams about what the Titans might do at left tackle, one name came up twice:

Taliese Fuaga.

One of my people thinks he’s the best tackle in the draft, and another put him right behind Joe Alt. Fuaga is a super physical lineman who can bully opponents. I wonder about his lateral quickness.

He did not do a 20-yard shuttle at the combine, which is a good indication of that. I asked his big supporter about concerns there. 

By BLAKE BEDDINGFIELD, special contributor

The Titans roster is starting to look competitive again after years of poor drafting and free-agent signings that have depleted the team's talent pool.  The Titans will be without their best player over the past decade in Derrick Henry. The team also loses productive veterans Denico Autry, Ryan Tannehill, Azeez Al-Shaair, Aaron Brewer and former starters Kristian Fulton, Sean Murphy-Bunting and Chris Hubbard.

The new-look Titans will infuse some much-needed youth and speed into their roster with the likes of Tony Pollard, Calvin Ridley, Lloyd Cushenberry, Saahdiq Charles, Kenneth Murray, L’Jarius Sneed, Sebastian Joseph-Day, Kenneth Murray and Chidobe Awuze. 

The upgrades in the secondary and at center are dramatic, while also adding Ridley to pair with Deandre Hopkins. Pollard will have a hard time living up to Henry’s production and dominance, but he adds a very productive compliment to last year’s third-round pick, Tyjae Spears, while Murray needs only to replace the speed and production of Al-Shaair. 

Make no mistake -- this team will only go as far as second-year quarterback Will Levis can take it. With the additions of Ridley, Pollard and Cushenberry the team has replaced or added stable players with past production. The Titans are still in rebuilding mode and have some major holes to fill at left and right tackle along with the defensive line, outside pass rusher, another inside linebacker and safety. Rebuilds are not done in one year. Still, the draft will help them fill some major holes while also adding, youth and inexpensive replacements. 

My Mock

By ZACH LYONS, STACKING THE INBOX

We are just one week away from the NFL Draft and it cannot get here quick enough. It has been a long, arduous offseason filled with tired narratives, mock draft analysis and draft scenarios peaking with Drake Maye in two-tone blue. People are running out of things to say, and it is easy to sympathize because the time between the combine and the draft moves at a snail’s pace.

There is draft analysis that has gone a little under the radar this season and that is this class of pass-rushing prospects. The EDGE class isn’t as sexy as years past or maybe we aren’t valuing its importance enough. Either way, the Titans have one clear solution at outside linebacker right now, Harold Landry. Outside of him, the team decision-makers, specifically Brian Callahan, have told you they don’t see much else.

At the latest owner’s meeting, the Titans' head coach talked to Paul Kuharsky about the situation at outside linebacker, and his words made the position sound more dire than the majority previously thought.

“I think good, I think with Harold (Landry) we’ve got a guy with proven ability to rush,” Callahan said. “I think Arden (Key) is a proven situational rusher. I think he played really well last year. I think we still need more. You can never have enough pass rushers, I think we’ve got guys who have proven themselves with the ability to do it.

“You’d like to have three of them. You’d like to have four of them. I think we do have some guys that can rush the passer and we’ll keep trying to add guys to the position.”

I put the important words in bold because sometimes people will just look over everything he said so it can fit their preconceived notions about a player or position group. By telling you that Arden Key is situational, he is telling you they don’t have a starter. By saying they need more, he’d like to have three or four, he’s telling you they don’t believe much will come from Rashad Weaver or fan favorite, Caleb Murphy. All three of those conclusions are the right conclusions to make.

I am a big supporter of Key. I do not think his 2023 campaign was as bad or tepid as people make it out to be, but they do need more from a starter. We all now have enough information from his previous stops and last season to know he is a situational pass rusher and that is perfectly fine for this team…as long as they find another one.

They sort of addressed the pass-rushing by bringing in Kenneth Murray, whose best work is when he is a human torpedo on a seek-and-destroy mission, but that doesn’t make the situation better for the Titans. So, who are some of the EDGE prospects in this upcoming draft that can come in and make an impact for this team without having to use a first-round pick?

Figuring Out What the Titans Look for in EDGE Prospects

By MIKE HERNDON, COLUMNIST

This is one of my favorite pieces to write each year as the NFL Draft remains one of my favorite weekends of the entire sports calendar. It’s the one weekend each year when every team – well, almost every team – feels like a winner. Fans of all 32 franchises will leave this weekend with hopes and dreams that the young men that their team selected will become the next Mahomes or the next Donald.

Of course, most of those teams will be slowly let down over the next four years, but then again, there is always next year’s draft.

However, I want to start this year’s edition of “My Guys” with a look back at my take on the 2023 draft class, which you can find here. I’ll go ahead and take an early victory lap on this quote:

“Stroud is my QB1 in this class. Yes, even over Bryce Young.”

I’ll also pat myself on the back for guys like Sidy Sow, who earned a starting job as a fourth-round rookie in New England and debuted as the highest-rated interior offensive line rookie per PFF with a grade of 64.4, and YaYa Diaby, who was selected in the third round by the Bucs and produced 7.5 sacks as a rotational edge rusher in his first season.