The Titans drafted a player who at least one fellow rookie sees as the toughest competition he's ever faced. Now Robert Saleh just needs to keep him rolling.
In the lead-up to the draft, the smoke on LB Sonny Styles
to the Titans was extremely thick. I pushed back on the connection hard from a insider's standpoint
, but it made just as little sense to me from an outsider's logical standpoint. Head Coach Robert Saleh has a decade-plus track record in this league of helping to maximize linebackers with mid-round pedigrees. If you want to look at who's on that list, I wrote about it here
.
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If I'm the leader of this front office, I see this as a tremendous value that I want to maximize. Spending the 4th overall pick on a LB runs counter to this idea. Spending the 60th overall pick on Texas LB Anthony Hill, though, is right in the sweet spot. And that's precisely what Titans GM Mike Borgonzi did.
The Titans traded up 9 picks to ensure they'd land Hill. Clearly, he's a player that Saleh really wanted. Coach picked up the phone in the Titans' video of drafting Hill and immediately asked him "are you ready to run?". That length and speed is what this defensive staff will look to tap into in Saleh's think less, react more system. And they're traits that Hill has been terrorizing opposing offenses with since his high school days.
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Just take it from former Nashville resident and star Vanderbilt TE Eli Stowers
.
Eli Stowers has high praise for Robert Saleh's new hand-picked linebacker
Stowers joined ESPN's Kevin Clark for an episode of "This Is Football" during the pre-draft process. Clark asked him who the best player he's ever faced is, and his answer was the newest Titans LB.
"Probably Anthony Hill," Stowers said with a smile. "We're both from Denton (Texas) but I went to Denton Guyer (High School) and he went to Denton Ryan. So we kind of went to rival high schools. We played him, we actually never played each other until up to my senior year. And he was a grade below me or two grades below me something like that. He was a sophomore or junior. And he had, in the game against us, he had 23 solo tackles. And I was like, yeah, this kid's legit. And so he went to Texas and we, like, couldn't block him. He was making all the all the run plays, all the everything, and then he ended up having a good career there too."
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Texas and Vandy faced off last November in a thrilling near-comeback for the Commodores. Hill's Longhorns hung on to win 34-31 in the end. Both future Day 2 NFL Draft picks balled out: Stowers caught 7 passes for 146 yards and 2 touchdowns. Hill had 4 total tackles, 1 sack, and 1.5 TFL's. Then in April, Stowers became an Eagle at pick 54 and Hill a Titan at pick 60.
It's clear that Hill is somebody that has been a freaky athlete with real defensive instincts for some time now. He's in some rarified air when you look at some of the most athletic linebacker prospects of the past 10 years with rock-solid missed tackle rates.
He was making other studs like Stowers notice him back in high school. He balled out in college at a top-flight program. And now it's Robert Saleh's job to keep him rolling in the pros.
