The Tennessee Titans had a miserable 2024 season that saw them finish 3-14 and earn the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL draft.
With this being Championship Sunday and having only four teams remaining, it is a great time for everyone to look back and play “what-if” for the NFL in 2024. The first focus is usually the NFL draft and how the prized rookie picks panned out in their new homes.
The Titans had a solid draft in 2024, selecting some players who appear to have a bright future in the NFL. The question really is, could it have been better?
The team over at Bleacher Report just did an exercise and did a complete re-draft of the first round which saw the Titans go in a completely different direction.
New Selection: Bo Nix, QB, Oregon
Original Selection: JC Latham, OT, Alabama
The Tennessee Titans used their first pick in 2024 to build around quarterback Will Levis. That turned out to be a mistake—so now the team is going to use its first pick to start over at the position.
Nix won 10 games as a rookie, passing for 3,775 yards and 29 touchdowns with a passer rating of 93.3. Denver offensive tackle Mike McGlinchey told reporters the Broncos knew early on that they had found their quarterback of the future.
“We all came out of training camp knowing this guy was going to be special,” McGlinchey said. “You joke about [how] rookies should be seen and not heard and all that, but he just showed up tough, smart, and I’ve said — put together. And that’s how he was all season.”
This is where the re-draft “what-ifs” start piling up. With Nix under center, the Titans probably won’t wind up with the first pick in 2025. But if the team did have that first pick and a quarterback already in hand, trading back becomes a lot more palatable for Tennessee—and the haul they could get from a QB-needy team eyeing Shedeur Sanders or Cam Ward could go a long way toward making Tennessee a factor in the AFC South once again.
This is an interesting scenario and one that does warrant some discussion. By all accounts, Nix outperformed all expectations in 2024 and does appear to be poised to become a solid quarterback in the league. But this fails to address one of the biggest issues with Tennessee, and in fact, drafting Nix instead of Latham would have decimated a bad offensive line.
Latham came in and stabilized the left side and proved to be a valuable selection with an upside. Yes, he wasn’t perfect, but without him, that line would have been even worse. There is no way that Nix would have performed up to the level he did in Denver behind a line anchored by Nicholas Petit-Frere, likely at left tackle.
There is no doubt that these exercises can be fun and interesting, but at the same time, they often overlook the issues that arise when they remove the player selected. Would Nix have been a better selection? Possibly. But without Latham, there is no doubt the offensive line would have been worse.