NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Titans have undergone massive roster overhaul over the last six months. General manager Mike Borgonzi added more than 20 players through free agency and trades alone before undrafted free agents and late-summer transactions even enter the picture.

Tennessee’s defensive line unit received the biggest makeover.

New faces brought in should raise the floor of a franchise coming off consecutive 3-14 seasons. The Titans roster construction plays directly into new head coach Robert Saleh’s strengths.

The defensive line depth chart looks nothing like 2025

The most improved position group on the Titans roster is the defensive line, and it is not particularly close.

Start with what Tennessee had a year ago: Defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons anchored a front that included Sebastian Joseph-Day, T’Vondre Sweat, Arden Key, and Jihad Ward, with Femi Oladejo mixing in for spot starts under Dennard Wilson’s 3-4 scheme. That group lacked depth and top-end talent beyond Simmons himself.
Now, consider the transition to Saleh and defensive coordinator Gus Bradley’s 4-3 system.

The sheer volume of reinforcements the Titans brought in stand out. Defensive end Keldric Falk was Tennessee’s second selection of this year’s first round. John Franklin-Myers was one of their biggest free agent investments. Jermaine Johnson, a former first-round pick, arrived via the Sweat trade. Jacob Martin adds further edge depth. Along the interior, Jordan Elliott, Timmy Horne, Cam Horsley, and sixth-round pick Jackie Marshall out of Baylor join Simmons and Solomon Thomas to form what projects as an eight- or nine-man rotation.

Simmons returns on a new contract extension after the best individual season of his career.

An elbow clean-up this offseason gives him a healthier starting point than he had entering 2025. The upgraded cast around him should allow Tennessee to deploy the kind of platoon-based rotation Saleh used to manufacture a productive defense. Saleh has said that if his defensive linemen play more than three consecutive snaps, the coaching staff is not doing its job correctly.

The Sweat trade made sense for where things stood

I did not love the T’Vondre Sweat pick from the jump.

I didn’t like that Tennessee passed on a deal the Los Angeles Rams offered them that Carolina ultimately accepted for the 38th overall selection in the 2024 NFL Draft. Sweat arrived with known red flags, including a DUI in the weeks leading up to the draft and a reputation for enjoying the nightlife. The organization tried to facilitate lifestyle adjustments to help him stay on a healthy trajectory, but Sweat did not put the work in across the board.

He was not considered a high-effort player and did not realize his potential in Tennessee.

With the general manager who drafted him (Ran Carthon) and the coaching staff he was drafted under both gone, moving Sweat and acquiring Johnson represented about as good a value proposition as the Titans could have extracted. Carthon deserves some credit for his advanced scouting on Sweat, and you could argue he got a raw deal, but he is not entirely blameless for why he is no longer the general manager.

Saleh and the new recruits should take the Titans defense to another level.

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