The Clock is Ticking for Tennessee Titans' JC Latham & Femi Oladejo
Buck Reising explains why two young Titans players in RT JC Latham & Edge Rusher Femi Oladejo are in danger of being left behind.
Video Transcript
A little more than two weeks away until the Tennessee Titans report for training camp.
Tonight, on this Sunday evening, we're gonna talk about two Titans players who are in danger of being left behind if they don't get their act together quickly.
Welcome into the Prime Time Program.
We're happy to have you.
As always, the subject matter this evening, JC Latham, Femi Oladejo, a right tackle and an edge rusher who are in very critical spots in their very young NFL careers.
With JC Latham and Femi, they are two guys who came into this off-season with questions, really did not feel like those questions were sufficiently addressed after the off-season program, through OTAs, through voluntary work, and then with mandatory mini camp.
Training camp, such an important time of year for any player on an NFL roster, but especially on a roster like the Titans where decisions must be made quickly.
This is a train that is on the tracks right now around Cam Ward, but you have to keep it on the tracks.
You have to figure out whether Femi and JC are gonna be a part of that equation, not even just in the long term, but in the immediate as well.
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So we go through the off-season program and, we wrap it up.
JC Latham is somebody who participates a little bit, but was not on the field for mandatory mini camp.
Femi, we didn't see at all.
Neither of these players talk to the media.
The locker room, for what it's worth, is not open at this time of year, so we're not able to go and talk to every player that we wanna talk to the way that we get to during the regular season.
Right now, players are brought up to the podium.
We get the opportunity to weigh in on the players that are provided to us.
We get to make suggestions as far as players we would like provided to us.
Not all of those suggestions are heard.
So in the case of Femi and JC, we didn't get to talk to them for the last couple of months.
We haven't talked to Femi Oladejo very much at all since he's been on the Titans roster after a rookie year that I struggle to call it outright disastrous, because I do feel like we saw some level of progress in a very small sample size.
He was only on the field for a period of six weeks as the Titans' second round pick in Mike Borgonzi's first draft.
But in those six weeks, I felt like we at least saw a player who was viable in the rotation as a rookie.
He's a second-round pick.
You have desperate needs.
You want a guy that's gonna get you double-digit sacks off the edge no matter where you're drafting him.
If you're a Titans fan, you're desperate for an impact player.
What the Titans are doing with Kaldrek Faulk, for example, is not something that the Titans had the luxury of doing with Femi Oladejo.
Kaldrek Faulk will not have to be out on the field right away.
He will be a rotational piece.
There may be some games that he starts, depending on what the defensive look that the Titans choose to start a game with in any one given game.
I'm sure he'll have some starts to his name.
But he doesn't have to play a significant amount of snaps this year, and we've talked about the Titans' defensive line rotation.
Femi's gonna be a part of that too.
Femi was expected to play a lot right out of the gates in that different style of defense.
So now, not only is he coming into a situation where, okay, we still need you, but we don't necessarily have to throw you out on the field, for 75, you know I mean, Femi wasn't gonna play 80% of the snaps, but Femi was gonna play a meaningful part of the defensive snaps last year given the thin, nature of the position.
Now he's coming into a situation where he's gonna be a defensive line player.
He's going to, he's going to have his hand in the ground for va- for the vast majority of snaps.
He's not gonna be asked to drop back into coverage the way that they were looking at him with last year, drafting him as a hybrid player, a player who had changed his position coming out of college and was still fine-tuning the parts a- and pieces, the techniques that he needs to be able to succeed in the NFL as a pass rusher.
There's no question he's got the physical build, but it's about the potential and whether he realizes that potential, turns it into skill.
So for Femi, definitely a lost season in 2025.
He's coming into this season, with a lot of questions to answer.
He was not able to be out on the field, at least when we were on the field.
It doesn't sound like he did much at all throughout the course of the off-season program.
Training camp, critical for Femi Oladejo.
Then you talk about JC Latham.
Titans have a lot of shuffling parts on the offensive line.
The Titans' offensive line is probably the position group Maybe you, you feel shaky at corner 'cause it's a lot of new players, and your depth is not great, but you do feel confident about the idea of the Titans being able to field a, an NFL quality starting caliber cornerback group, right?
Cornerback is a room that you're probably a little shaky on.
The offensive line, there are players who have started in NFL games in Cordell Volsen, who feels like he's gonna have the inside track at right guard, and Austin Schlottmann, who feels like right now he's the primary option at center.
We'll see how things play out.
We'll see how the competition in training camp goes.
We'll see if he is somebody who is able to start a full season for them, give them, quality, quality starts as a guy who was paid, you know, meaningful money to come in here in free agency, or with a guy like Andre James, who's had a lot of NFL starts, has played for Carmen Brousillo as well.
Other options that the Titans have.
It, it doesn't feel like there are definitively, Parts and pieces on that offensive line that you can lean on, feel good about, and trust in front of Cam Ward, who was the most sacked quarterback in football last season.
That offensive line group cannot have additional questions around it if JC Latham is a question.
Now, JC dealt with a hip injury all year long.
If you're a player at that size dealing with a hip injury, I'm certain it's uncomfortable.
He played through it for the vast majority of last season, and he was not awful.
He was not great.
He was fine.
He needs to cut down on the penalties.
He is somebody who I think we feel okay about the progress of JC Latham, but he's the seventh overall pick in the draft, and you want him to play like it.
Right now, he hasn't played up to that pedigree.
His comparison is Joe Alt in Los Angeles, who has missed time, obviously missed, a huge chunk of last season, but when they've both been on the field at the same time, understanding that they're very early in their careers, though at the end of this season, both players will be extension eligible by their respective teams, especially, with first-round picks, with first-round picks and additional team control.
Potentially, do you wanna get ahead of the offensive line market?
Are they going to slow play you to try and maximize their leverage?
Whatever the case may be, they're young players, but the clock is ticking, and on a critical piece of that puzzle, JC Latham, who's one of the few Rand Carthon picks who's still hanging around, Cedric Gray is still out there, looks like he's an ascending player.
You feel better about the trajectory of Gray, for example, than you do about JC Latham.
Can he get his conditioning right?
Can he come in here, with a healthy season?
Can he come in here and be a, a part of the solution as opposed to somebody who, I wouldn't say more times than not, but on a meaningful number of snaps last year, you felt like he was more contributing to problems than he was being a part of the solution.
They got better collectively as an offensive line group last year down the stretch, season was well out of hand.
They don't have that luxury this year, and they're probably a lesser group this year.
Though, we'll see how this plays out, how much Carmen Bracelo and the things that he's going to do to change the way that the offensive line, the run game specifically, how they play, how it's schemed, there are going to be some significant changes.
Bracelo made the o- offensive line unit in New York with the Giants significantly better in his short time there.
He's been a plus everywhere that he's gone.
You could've said that as about Bill Callahan as well until he got to Tennessee, and then obviously, that, that tenure, that history of success, was called into question.
We'll see if Bracelo is able to, do more with less because he is the position coach, and that is the group that will definitively have to do more with less.
If not, these guys are in danger of getting left behind.
They have to show forward progress.
They have to show immediate impact right out of the gates at two critical positions if the Titans are going to be able to count on them as foundational pieces moving forward around that all-important number one overall pick at quarterback from last year, Cam Ward.
