For the second straight season, the Tennessee Titans didn’t get much out of their most recent draft class.
The only member of the class to see significant playing time was Elijah Molden, who not only played well as the team’s top slot cornerback, but performed as one of the better ones in the NFL, especially among rookies.
The rest of the class didn’t have much success, though.
Caleb Farley, Monty Rice and Rashad Weaver all saw their seasons end early due to injury, and Dillon Radunz started just one game and played 124 offensive snaps in total.
Dez Fitzpatrick, who didn’t even make the 53-man roster out of training camp, played sparingly, as did Racey McMath, and Brady Breeze is no longer with the team.
Taking all of that into account, Pro Football Focus ranked the Titans’ 2021 draft class as the No. 22 group in the NFL after the 2021 season.
Here’s PFF’s take on things in Tennessee:
Why they’re ranked here: Tennessee got a combined 363 offensive and defensive snaps out of their first three draft picks, which doesn’t include fourth-round selection at wide receiver — Dez Fitzpatrick — who was released prior to the start of the season before later being re-signed to the practice squad. The Titans just didn’t ask much of their rookie class in a season where they earned the No. 1 seed in the AFC.
How their top pick fared: Injuries were the biggest concern for Caleb Farley coming out of Virginia Tech, and ended up limiting him to just 60 defensive snaps after the rookie tore his ACL early in the 2021 season. He allowed seven receptions from nine targets for 75 yards in his limited action.
Best value pick: Defenders who get tagged with the “slot-only” label are often going to be overlooked, which was the case with Elijah Molden coming out of Washington. Molden will need to clean things up as a tackler (15% missed tackle rate in 2021), but he delivered a solid overall performance in his 671 defensive snaps. He ranked third in PFF’s WAR metric among defenders drafted in the third round or later.
While the 2021 draft class wasn’t as disastrous as the 2020 group, it still wasn’t a good showing overall.
Thankfully, there is still plenty of time to right the ship and the Titans can only hope that some or all of these players can make the kind of second-year leap in 2022 that Kristian Fulton did this past season.
