NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Titans didn’t defend the run nearly well enough last year, ranking 26th
Like most teams, they talk about earning the right to rush the passer by stopping the run and by that standard, the Titans didn’t earn the right. That would help explain how bad they were at knocking down the quarterback, as they tied for the third fewest sacks in the league with 32.
Top-flight pass rushers -- particularly of the high-speed, bendy variety -- were not available to them once they decided Cam Ward was their pick at No. 1 in the draft, and so they headed a different direction.
While the speedy 6-foot-5, 240-pound Arden Key is still in the mix at edge, their other solutions have something big in common: They are big.
Second-round pick Femi Oladejo is 6-3, 259 and veterans Dre’Mont Jones is 6-3, 281 while Lorenzo Carter is 6-5, 265. That’s a move away from Harold Landry, their stalwart edge starter for the five of the last six years (one missed for injury) who was 6-2, 252.
Oladejo was an edge for just the final 10 games of his career at UCLA. Jones has 30.5 sacks in six seasons and Carter has 21 career sacks in seven, a combined average of four a year.
“We’re bigger body guys out there,” Jones said. “We’re coming out here to F some people up, put hands on people, get nasty. Stop the run obviously, but I’m coming out there to F stuff up.”
Jones has played all up and down the line. He’s an outside linebacker, in outside linebacker coach Ben Bloom’s meeting room, but that room “collides,” as Jones put it, with Tracy Rocker’s defensive line meeting room.
If things go well for Jones he could harken back to Denico Autry, who bounced around for the Titans during his three seasons with the team that concluded in 2023.
The sack production will have to go up, though, as Autry averaged 9.5.
Dennard Wilson wants all the Titans ends to be tone-setting, pocket-collapsing bullies.
He said Jones is constantly trying to teach young players and hasn’t had much to learn coming from a similar scheme under Mike McDonald in Seattle.
“First of all he’s a bully off the edge,” Wilson said. “He can condense the pocket. He can win his one-on-one matchup. He can reduce and go play a 3-technique if we need him. Dre can do multiple things. He’s smart enough to know the defense. He can drop in coverage. There aren’t many limitations that he has.
At the same time, Wilson said Carter has been a perfect fit, a super athlete with some basketball background. Steve Jackson and Frank Bush vouched for him from their time on the coaching staff in Atlanta when Carter was there.
“My thing with him is to tell him he’s a bad MFer,” Wilson said. “Make him believe that he’s a 
bad man and every time he goes out there he has to prove that he’s a bad man. We’re trying to get everything out of him that the NFL saw when he came out. …I expect great things.”
The Giants picked Carter in the third round in 2018 out of Georgia and he went on to play for the Falcons.
“I’m prepared to do big things,” Carter said of his third stop. “We’ve got to set edges to be a good defense where the ball can’t go outside and we’ve got the guys inside who can make the plays.
"We’ve got to lead, come out, be an aggressive group of guys. From what I’ve seen so far, that won’t be a problem.”