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The Tennessee Titans’ No. 1 priority this coming offseason will be to add help to a pass rush that currently has the fewest number of sacks (15) in the NFL.
So it comes as no surprise that a pair of recent mock drafts both have the Titans taking an EDGE in the first round.
CBS Sports’ Ryan Wilson has Tennessee going with Miami (FL) edge rusher Gregory Rousseau, who totaled 15.5 sacks in 2019 but opted out of the 2020 campaign.
The Titans have 14 sacks this season. By comparison, Rousseau racked up 15.5 sacks last season but opted out in 2020. He’s new to the position and the question is whether he can come close to replicating that type of production at the next level.
In the mock draft of Pro Football Focus’ Austin Gayle, the Titans select Penn State’s Jayson Oweh, who has 6.5 sacks in seven games this season.
One of several developmental edge prospects in this class, Oweh is athletic and bendy for the position but lacks high-end collegiate production. He earned just an 81.8 PFF pass-rushing grade in 2019 and an 80.3 PFF pass-rushing grade in 2020. However, he is a project worth investing in the back end of the first round for a Titans team in desperate need of some juice along the edge.
While I fully expect to see the Titans take an edge rusher in the upcoming draft, a win-now team like Tennessee needs a more immediate solution than a draft pick that typically takes time to develop.
That’s why we’ll more than likely see general manager Jon Robinson address the position in free agency, although he’ll have to do a better job than he did in 2020, as both free-agent EDGE acquisitions Jadeveon Clowney and Vic Beasley proved to be colossal failures after combining for zero sacks.
We’ll see what direction the Titans end up going when it comes time to cross that bridge, but as of right now the team’s focus is on trying to make the playoffs, and then a postseason run with the putrid pass rush it currently has.
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