10 Titans players in 2025 who are key to attracting the best head coach candidate for Cam Ward in 2026

What do Chad Brinker and Mike Borgonzi have to offer their next head coach?

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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Brian Callahan is no longer the Tennessee Titans head coach, making him the fourth GM or HC fired in Nashville in less than three years time. Owner Amy Adams Strunk has done a bang-up job sending a loud and clear message about her ball club: be careful taking a job here if you want any semblance of security. The track record is indisputable.

So what about this head coaching job will be attractive to the next batch of candidates? Aside from being one of thirty two such jobs in the entire world—which will always make it attractive—what can the Titans entice their top candidates with? Every year, between a fifth and a fourth of the league is looking for a new head coach. What can Chad Brinker and Mike Borgonzi sell their vacancy with?

When I look for the foundational pieces of this roster—the impact players who will be around for the duration of their current contract and potentially years beyond—I count 11 names. Almost all of them are young, in their first or second years with the team. That’s just a part of the brutal reality of this roster and the middle-age gap left by Jon Robinson’s final three draft classes.

One of those 11 names is Cam Ward, obviously. He is the crown jewel of this roster for the foreseeable future. How he performs down the stretch of his rookie year can certainly help or hurt his stock in the eyes of prospective coaches, but no matter what, he is going to be a top selling point. The next head coach of the Tennessee Titans will be somebody who believes in Ward, and is equipped to develop him into the future of the franchise. That’s one of the only prerequisites for the job that we can write in ink at this point.

So who are these other 10 players that will serve as the foundation of the next head coach’s roster? Here they are:

LG Peter Skoronski and RT JC Latham

the foundation of the Titans offensive line is their pair of recent first round picks, Peter Skoronski and JC Latham. These two young, cost controlled pillars of Cam Ward’s protection up front are going to be around for a while. Skoronski has become one of the best guards in the entire NFL in his past dozen games or so. He’s easily this team’s best lineman, and is deserving of a second contract. They’d be foolish not to keep him around.

JC Latham still has a lot to prove. He’s played in a lot fewer games, and has had a really unfortunate start to his sophomore campaign. A hip strain took him off the board for a month after looking solid in the first two and a half quarters of the season opener. After a long diet of rest for his hip recovery, the 340 pound man came back predictably rusty and out of shape. I think people sometimes underestimate how unavoidable this is for this kind of player when they have to truly take a month off, myself included. The only way out is through. You have to play yourself back into things, and he came back to nightmare first assignment in Maxx Crosby, which he thoroughly failed.

This has led to speculation that maybe he’s really just a guard, which I don’t buy one bit. Patience will reveal the truth about Latham this year, and the truth is that tackles that look like him don’t grow on trees. He’s not going anywhere.

WR Elic Ayomanor, WR Chimere Dike, and TE Gunnar Helm

The skill players of the future on this roster are all rookies, by my estimation. That can be seen as depressing or promising depending on your POV. The truth is, it’s a little bit of both.

This trio of 2025 fourth round picks have all flashed promising ability through their first two months in the league. Chimere Dike has solidified himself as a dynamic return man, and is just off the heels of his best game as a receiver. His ability to stretch the field from the slot is valuable. Elic Ayomanor became a starter on this team immediately as a rookie and has flashed pro traits as well. He stands to develop into a nice WR2 or WR3 of the future on the outside. And Gunnar Helm might have the best hands of any skill player on this team. He’s also taking real strides as a blocker. Team leadership wants to see more of him down the stretch of this season, and I expect they’ll get their wish.

Do any of these guys look like stars? No, at least not today. But they’re useful players already, and they’ll be the cost-controlled bones of this offensive roster for the foreseeable future at the very least.

DT Jeffery Simmons, EDGE Femi Oladejo, and LB Cedric Gray

Now, to the defensive side of the ball. There’s not much to say about Jeffery Simmons as a pillar of this team as long as he isn’t traded. And every bit of messaging I’ve gotten from the team is that they’d rather forfeit the season than move who they see as the best interior defensive lineman in the entire league right now. Simmons is 28, and at his position, we’ve seen elite players age gracefully.

The only other player along the defensive front that I see a serious future here for is rookie Femi Oladejo, who was taken in the second round as a project all along. The expectation was and still is that he’ll round into form after a year or two in the league, though his current sidelining on IR isn’t helping his progress. The bottom line is that this front office believes in him, he plays a premium position, and he’s cost-controlled. That locks him into this team’s plans.

And finally, second year LB Cedric Gray has made it clear that he’s the middle linebacker of the future in Nashville. He’s come on extremely strong after winning the starting job in training camp, and has been a tackling machine ever since.

S Amani Hooker and S Kevin Winston Jr.

In the secondary, I only see two players who are truly foundational pieces for the next regime. One is veteran Amani Hooker, and frankly the only reason I’m calling him foundational right now is because this front office just signed him to a multi-year extension. He’s not playing his best football at the moment. Hopefully for the next regime, he can get back to the player he was in years past.

then there’s rookie Kevin Winston Jr, who this front office still sees as a safety of the future. He got his debut on defense last week, and was involved in a pair of QB pressures on just a couple of snaps out there. I think he’ll start to pop down the stretch of this season.

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