Mike Borgonzi’s inaugural Tennessee Titans draft class of 2025 needs to be a foundational one. The good news is that so far, things are looking good for this group of young players. But so much about how we view the class will be determined this Fall. Most of these young players are positioned to make a second year leap and cement themselves as useful members of this roster. But a couple of them are in higher pressure situations than others.

Now that the bulk of the player acquisition cycle is behind us, I think it’s informative to look back at where Borgonzi did and did not add to the roster. One of the positions he left alone more than we expected him to was safety. One of his biggest moves last summer was extending veterans safety Amani Hooker, locking him down on this roster for the foreseeable future.

But it’s the other, younger starting safety that I want to talk about right now. Because Kevin Winston Jr. was one of my favorite draft picks of 2025, and I think his ceiling is extremely high beginning this fall. He just has to stay healthy and realize that potential. And if you take him at his word today, he’s in a lot better place with his body than he has been in a long time.

Kevin Winston feels physically prepared to have breakout season

Winston‘s rookie training camp was derailed by a soft tissue injury that kept him out of practice for a handful of weeks. He ended up slowly easing back into things at the beginning of the regular season, and he played a good chunk of it despite dealing with that hamstring on the front end and then the back end of the season.

That most recent injury history might lead one to forget about the major injury he was coming off of in college. He tore his ACL at the beginning of his final college season, and frankly, that’s the reason why he was ever available as late in the draft as he was for the Titans to scoop up. That was the focus of his return to play last summer before aggravating his hamstring, and it’s important to note that he is now a “year after the year after” candidate in 2026.

“No, I never felt like my self at all,” Winston told us during OTA’s. “I was never able to… everything I was learning was in a game. You know, we went over things in practice. But the majority of what I was going through when I got beat or when things happened was in the game. Where now, during OTAs, I’m seeing things. It’s happening to me now for when that time comes in a game.”

I think that explanation is pretty telling. It’s easy for us to underestimate just how detrimental missing any portion of a rookie camp can be for a player. For him to openly admit that he felt like he was doing all of his learning on the job last season makes me wonder how much better he can look when he knows what’s going on.

He showed versatility as a box safety, as well as a guy who can hang in two-high last year. But all indications right now, both in terms of what the coaches are telling us and in terms of what the roster seems to dictate, are that Winston will be playing in the two-high a lot more than he comes down into the box. The Titans need him and Hooker to be healthy and available because of who’s behind them on the depth chart. Winston really needs to work out.

“It’s been refreshing. You guys have met Kevin,” DBs coach Marquand Manuel explained at the podium a couple weeks ago. “Kevin loves football. Whenever you can line a guy up with a coach who loves football, he’s been doing a really good job just coming in and learning the small nuances of the position. And understanding, you know right now we’re just asking him to be the best Kevin Winston and nobody else… he’s on his way.”

I can’t help but think that Winston is on his way as well. His tenacity on the field, whether you’re watching his college tape, his Titans tape, or just any old practice in pads, is absolutely infectious. Now, it needs to translate at another level on the field this fall.