Story by
Are Titans fighting smoke with smoke by using top draft prospect as bait in the NFL Draft rumor mill?
- Story by
- Are Titans fighting smoke with smoke by using top draft prospect as bait in the NFL Draft rumor mill?
In short, my answer is yes.
Head on a swivel kids! It’s NFL Draft week, and the intel is already being delivered via fire hose. Front offices and coaches are sharing their thoughts more freely behind the scenes. They’re also lying more freely behind the scenes! This week is all about game theory and smoke screens. And this year in particular is off to one of the more wild starts that I can remember.
Advertisement
What makes it so wild? The fact that everything we thought we knew is threatening to flip on it’s head! The Jets were locked in on Arvell Reese , then it flipped to David Bailey last week, and now it’s threatening to flip back to Arvell Reese! The reality there? The league doesn’t know what New York is going to do at 2.
Suddenly the Cardinals are seriously interested in RB Jeremiyah Love at pick 3?! That’s real. Ryan Roberts and I wrote about some sourced intel on that topic right here . But Love isn’t their top choice…
The Giants don’t seem to love LB Sonny Styles as was once believed? Suddenly S Caleb Downs and, yes, WR Jordyn Tyson are in play at the fifth pick? What is happening?!
Advertisement
And finally, there’s the Titans at four. All of the talk on Monday seemed to center around LB Sonny Styles and RB Jeremiyah Love at at the fourth pick, with their stocks trending in opposite directions. I’m here to push my chips in: don’t buy this noise.
National media pushes Sonny Styles as serious Titans target at 4
Tying yourself to the mast of a draft take is an objectively foolish thing to do. This thing is just so unpredictable, and there is so much noise to sift through at this stage in the proceedings. But I’m willing to go down with the ship on this one if I must.
Advertisement
On Monday, three big-time national insiders were pushing Sonny Styles in some form or fashion. It began with ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Get Up, who said "I think people around the league believe the Titans might not go pass rusher. And if they're not going pass rusher, then obviously there are a group of players that they could consider at that point in time. You could look at Sonny Styles, you could look at Carnell Tate , you could look at Arvell Reese, could you go in that pass rush mode. Or is there a team that wants to trade up?”
Then ESPN’s Peter Schrager chimed in on his podcast The Schrager Hour. “I know I spoke with someone in the organization in Tennessee ,” Schrager shared. “I’ll say this, I don’t think the Titans are taking Jeremiyah Love anymore. I am moving off of that. That was something I had in my mock draft, and felt like that was the pick. As we are now four days before it, I do not think the Titans are taking Jeremiyah Love at four. I think the Titans are taking either one of the two following players: Sonny Styles the linebacker out of Ohio State, or the Bailey/Reese who doesn’t go there… or is available. And then my third backstop is Carnell Tate. Yea, Carnell Tate could go as high as four.”
Finally, I noticed longtime insider Tony Pauline write at essentiallysports.com about the Titans pick at 4. “I mentioned from the Senior Bowl that edge rusher David Bailey fits the Titans defense like a duck on water,” Pauline began. “And I'm told he is the game-changer new head coach Robert Saleh covets. Bailey led the FBS in the 2025 season with 14.5 sacks and a 21.3 % pressure rate. Yet it's unlikely the Texas Tech product falls into the Titans' laps.”
Advertisement
This part is in line with what I believe to be the truth. But Pauline continued. “The team likes both Sonny Styles and Jermiyah Love, yet it believes the Ohio State linebacker is the safer pick for their scheme.” This is where we diverge.
Respectfully, I think they all have this wrong.
How Sonny Styles is a logical piece of Mike Borgonzi’s plan to maximize his position
I’ve put out two versions of my Titans pie chart of options at 4 in the past month. The first came after the Owners Meetings in Phoenix, and an updated version came last week. Let’s revisit it one last time.
Advertisement
Nothing changed about the top of my list between the first two versions. Arvell Reese and David Bailey are lumped together as a pair at 50%. In other words, whichever one is there, if they don’t come off the board in the first three picks, would be the Titans’ preference. RB Jeremiyah Love came next at 35% as the “if the EDGE guys are gone” clear favorite. Then Sonny Styles, Carnell Tate, and Rueben Bain rotated some as the remaining smaller percentages. The second version of my chart had Styles at 10% as the only other option at 4 with a puncher’s chance.
If you’ve been following what I’ve said and written the past couple weeks, you’re going to notice a change in my tune on Sonny Styles right about now. I do not think Styles is a serious consideration at the 4th pick. The Titans like Styles a lot. Some absolutely love him. But this is a positional impact discussion, and a math discussion. It’s a simple numbers game at the top: At least one of Reese, Bailey, and Love must be on the board for the Titans at 4. And I feel very strongly that they wouldn’t pass on one of those players for the off-ball linebacker Styles.
Allow me to take you back to GM Mike Borgonzi’s comments at last week’s pre-draft press conference. When talking about Styles, he went out of his way to not only mention his intention to draft the best player available, but to also consider the highest impact player available. You can read his exact quote and my full breakdown of the takeaways here . Off-ball linebacker simply does not have a bigger impact value than EDGE or even RB in the vast majority of cases. It’s an extremely important “glue” position, and the very best linebackers in the best defenses can be gamechangers. But you cannot bank on this guy being Fred Warner . This isn’t about Styles, who is a fantastic prospect. It’s about how I believe the Titans view the three players ahead of him.
Advertisement
The theory behind late-breaking draft smoke screens
So why all this talk from big names? Why the buzz, what’s the point of the smoke? All of these late-breaking potential smoke screens make total sense from a game theory standpoint.
Consider the Cardinals at 3, who very loudly entered the Jeremiyah Love fray here at the buzzer. The assumed reality of this situation that every team is operating on is that nobody is trading up for Jeremiyah Love. No team since the turn of the century has traded up into the top-10 of the draft for a running back (Ricky Williams, 1999). No team has traded up within the top-10 of a draft since 2012 for a running back ( Trent Richardson , 2012). Love is largely considered to be the top offensive player in this entire class, but teams just aren’t likely to trade up for that position.
Advertisement
But teams may very well be coaxed into coming up for a top defender.
I believe Arizona’s interest in Love is real ( sourced info can be found here ), but they’re wise to push this hard anyways. For a team potentially looking to come up for Styles or an EDGE, they could call Arizona’s bluff on taking their guy at 3. People think the Cardinals really want out, and would really like an offensive tackle. And if the Titans are going to take Love at 4, why not look to trade at 5 or 6 instead for cheaper?
The Cardinals threatening to stick and take Love disarms this plan. Because the implied threat becomes “hey, we’ll just take Love and then the Titans are sure to stick and pick your defensive target at 4. So you better come trade with us at 3 to get him.”
Advertisement
As for the Titans, I said as much immediately following Borgonzi’s presser last Thursday: if you came away from that session thinking “wow, the Titans really love them some Arvell Reese and Sonny Styles”, I think Borgonzi would really appreciate it if you’d keep saying that as much as possible until draft night.
I believe the Titans think a team could trade with them for a defender, but not Love. And I think all of this draft week smoke is proof positive of their serious appetite to move down for a fair offer. The Borgonzi-Brinker regime has been steadfast on one thing from the beginning: we want more top-100 picks.
Advertisement
And the Giants, perhaps as a result of all of this chatter, are wise to turn the tables on pick 5. All the talk yesterday was about how they may not be as in love with Sonny Styles as previously mentioned. We heard WR Jordyn Tyson enter the discussion as a serious consideration at 5. Tyson’s stock is soaring and the feeling within the league is that teams are higher on him than consensus has been in the media all cycle. My two cents? I think the Giants want Jeremiyah Love, or they’re interested in moving out of pick 5 at a fair price. It’s a buyer’s market, folks!
I think the first four picks of this draft will be Mendoza, Reese, Bailey, and Love in some order. And I think the Titans will get one of the guys not named Mendoza. This has been somewhat of a chalky outcome for a few weeks now, and I believe the simplest explanation is the correct one here.
