Happy lying season, everybody.

The NFL regular season has come to a close, and for teams who missed the playoffs, that means it’s time to turn their attention to the draft. And in the case of the Titans, it means a lot of national eyeballs pointed their direction with the 1st overall pick.

Some years, the draft rumor mill begins at pick #2. Nobody questioned who the Bears were selecting 1st overall in 2023, it was always Caleb Williams. But in a class like this one, no one can say for sure what the Titans will do with the first pick in April. Especially not now, in the first week of January.

As draft season ramps up, you’re going to hear a lot of national speculation about who the Titans want with their first pick. Some will be admittedly speculatory, but some will be framed like a sourced, national report.

And here’s the truth of the matter: you shouldn’t listen to them.

This is primarily a matter of timing. It is currently early January. Nobody in media knows who the team prefers, because the team doesn’t know who the team prefers!

That’s not an opinion, that’s a fact. Now, this isn’t to say every reporter who throws out information is full of it. Some are surely clout-chasing liars, but most are just doing their job. They get information from sources they trust, and they put it out there. It’s even fair to say that their information may have been the truth! But the context is key.

At this stage in the game, a reporter may hear “the Titans LOVE Shedeur Sanders”. And the context of that information is liable to be one of a couple different things: it may be an individual source in the front office sharing their own early opinion of a player. It may be an offhand comment about the general vibe in a specific department. It may even be an intentional lie fed to the media to drive up or down the stock of certain players. Teams love to play the information game!

On a more cynical note, it’s liable to be fed from the agency side of things. The vast majority of fans have no idea how much of the narrative is spun by networks of agents. As somebody whose entire professional life revolves around the NFL, even I am regularly underestimating the power of agency information. A strong enough narrative can become reality, and the people in charge of getting people paid in this business are very very good at spinning narratives.

But when you hear early into draft season that a team LOVES a player, here is what it definitively is not: an accurate reflection of how a team truly feels.

Titans Head Coach Brian Callahan has talked multiple times here at the end of the season about he and his coaching staff haven't done any work on the draft yet. Until the regular season ends, these coaches are singularly focused on the games. In his first offseason press conference on Monday, he had this to say about where the team is in their process and what is most important to them:

"You know, I haven't spent much time scouting, but I will be pouring every ounce of myself into that draft class and seeing what it looks like, what those players look like, what they provide, what their strengths and weaknesses are. The other part of it that's critically important is the person. You know, how do they function? What's their leadership style? What's their mental capacity? You know, what's their nervous system, if you will. How do they function in the game and as a player? Those things are really important and those don't come until we get a chance to talk to guys and bring them in and go see pro days and all that. So this process is in it's infancy. It is very, very, very, very early. So to make any proclamations, I think for us at this point on whether a class is good or not, I think is very premature and we've got to do our due diligence on all the players that will be available to us."

Here's all you need to know in order to dismiss the idea that team's know who they love yet: zero coaches across the league have done any real work on these prospects. Front offices have done some, but nothing close to a deep dive. Area scouts haven't emptied and compared notebooks in full staff meetings yet. The personnel departments haven’t met all together in anything close to a comprehensive way yet. Coaching staffs certainly haven’t met with front offices yet.

And as Callahan pointed out at Monday's presser, real flag-planting from the decision makers in this league doesn't happen until they get their hands on these guys. They want to see and feel them move in-person. They want to get them on a whiteboard and in the film room. They want to pick their brains and try to figure out what kind of man each of them is. And none of that happens until the all-star games at the end of January, and then the Combine at the end of February.

It doesn't play well on the internet, but it's just the plain honest truth: It is very early, and any proclamations made right now are premature. Nobody in media knows who the teams like yet, because the teams don't know who they like yet! Use this information as your filter as the rumors start flying hot and heavy this year.

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