Three weeks and change stand between the Tennessee Titans and the selection kicking off the 2025 NFL Draft in Green Bay.
One step short of the “Everything Must Go” sign is where the Titans stand in their decision-making process with the No. 1 overall pick. At least that’s the public image the team is attempting to convey this week at the NFL spring meeting.
In reality, the Titans have already shown their cards.
There is still time for the New York Giants or New Orleans Saints to move to the driver’s seat. But if either franchise felt the Titans were serious about moving the pick, they’d likely already be holding the prime choice in the 2025 prospect haul.
General manager Mike Borgonzi has made it clear—and has repeated since—the Titans would like to collect as many picks in the top 100 of this draft as they possibly can. That is a message about the quality at the top.
Cam Ward is a prize for a franchise without a starter in place like the Titans, but Tennessee’s needs run deep even after a significant haul in free agency. Borgonzi intimated at the NFL Scouting Combine that his board would be set—and likely remain with only minor changes—before players began working out in Indianapolis.
If the Titans want Ward, they’ll set the sale price on the No. 1 pick as steep as possible. And if the Browns, Giants, Saints or another team we’re not considering decides Ward is the only blue-chip arm in the class, they’ll be willing to pay with a pair of first-round picks and more to trade into the draft’s pilot seat.
Recall at this time last year, the Bears were still publicly feigning consideration of trades and prospects not named Caleb Williams.
And the year before, Chicago swindled the Carolina Panthers out of No. 1 receiver DJ Moore and a stack of draft picks that are still paying dividends.
Should Borgonzi get the Godfather offer and decide a trade is in the franchise’s best interest, it will set in motion a real-time stress test for the new pecking order in Nashville.
Borgonzi once worked with Bears general manager Ryan Poles in Kansas City and has 15 years under his belt, but he was hired as a first-time GM with a multilayered reporting structure in personnel that attempts to interweave input from head coach Brian Callahan and the top football executive on the flow chart, Chad Brinker. Brinker is president of football operations, a rung higher than Borgonzi, and they’ll both need a signature from controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk. Strunk already booted Mike Vrabel and GM Ran Carthon in successive seasons and is trending toward entering David A. Tepper (Carolina Panthers owner) territory.
Callahan has informed inquiring potential trade partners of the cost and referred to franchise quarterbacks as priceless.
We are about to find out if he gets what he wants—and needs—to win in Nashville.
For Titans fans, the stakes could not be much higher than they are in April.
