Tennessee Titans right tackle JC Latham enters his third NFL season in 2026 with skeptics questioning whether the 7th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft can develop into a franchise cornerstone. 

The 23-year-old has given up 15 sacks across his first two seasons, and the critics have been loud. But there is a clear developmental path sitting right in front of him, and it belongs to Chicago Bears right tackle Darnell Wright, the 10th overall pick in the 2023 draft who just landed at No. 6 in ESPN’s executive, scout, and coach poll of the best tackles in football.

Wright wasn’t even an honorable mention a year ago. Now he’s a top 10 tackle in the league. That trajectory should matter to every Titans fan ready to slap the “bust” label on Latham.

JC Latham and Darnell Wright’s parallel backgrounds

Both Latham and Wright were 5-star recruits who started from day one at SEC programs. Wright played four years at Tennessee out of Huntington, West Virginia. Latham was a top 10 recruit nationally out of IMG Academy who started three years at right tackle for Alabama. Both became top 10 draft picks. Both struggled as rookies.

Wright’s rookie pass-blocking grade on Pro Football Focus was a 61.4 across 17 starts at right tackle for Chicago. Latham’s rookie grade was a 67.8 at left tackle for Tennessee, a position he never played in college. Both allowed seven sacks in year one.

Let’s sit on that for a moment… Latham graded nearly 7.5 points higher than Wright as a rookie while learning an entirely new position on a bad offense quarterbacked by turnover-prone Will Levis. He also had just one accepted penalty in pass-blocking snaps across 17 games. The raw material was always there.

Year two for Latham had a hiccup you can’t ignore

Wright’s second season showed clear improvement. His PFF pass-blocking grade jumped to 75.4, allowed six sacks, 21 hurries, and 30 pressures. That makes 13 total sacks allowed in two seasons.

Latham’s second-year grade stayed relatively flat at 68, with eight sacks, 24 hurries, and 33 pressures allowed. 15 total sacks. 

But, you have to go beyond the PFF numbers to fully understand what 2025 was for the Titans’ tackle.

Latham dealt with a hip injury at the end of training camp that forced him out of the Week 1 game against Denver in the second half and sent him to injured reserve, costing him four games. 

When he returned, his penalty count ballooned from one in his rookie year to six in pass-blocking situations. My theory is that those penalties, many of them false starts, were a form of mental overcompensation after the hip injury. He was antsy to get out of his stance early because his body was telling him he needed a head start to be effective.

Here’s where it gets encouraging for JC. Over Latham’s final six games of the 2025 season, after working through all of that, he allowed just one sack. Titans left guard Peter Skoronski showed an identical late-season surge at the end of his own second year in 2024, allowing just one sack over his final six games before breaking out in year three. Skoronski was just ranked the 9th best interior offensive lineman in ESPN’s same poll.

Yes, JC Latham is THAT young…

Latham turned 21 right before the 2024 draft (February 8). He played his entire rookie season at 21 and his entire second season at 22. He will be 23 for the entirety of the 2026 season.

For perspective, the two rookie offensive linemen the Titans just drafted are both older than him. Fernando Carmona turned 24 in early July. Pat Coogan turns 24 in November. Tennessee’s third-year starter is younger than its rookies.

The Year three offensive lineman jump

I like to credit my guy, Ramon Foster, long time Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Vols lineman, for coining this on his Ramon & Will radio show: Year three for offensive lineman is when it all starts to come together.

In his third season, Wright allowed just three sacks, 13 hurries, and 19 pressures. Sub-20 in both hurries and pressures. That earned him the No. 6 spot among all NFL tackles.

The four paragraphs Jeremy Fowler and his sources wrote about Wright in that ESPN poll could describe Latham in a year or two:

Wright is on an upward trajectory as an anchor of Chicago’s vaunted offensive line. The team ranked third in rushing and top 10 in overall offense.

“Power and brute strength,” an NFL personnel director said. “He can do whatever he wants on a football field.”

The Bears were highly pleased with Wright last season as he played through a nagging shoulder injury. But despite ranking fourth in pass block win rate (95.2%), some voters believe he needs to improve his refinement on passing downs.

“I don’t see a consistently high motor,” a veteran NFL defensive coach said. “That’s the next step for him is getting that up.”

I’m not saying Latham will be a top 10 tackle after this season. That shouldn’t be the expectation based on the first two years. But 22 tackles received at least one vote in ESPN’s poll. Can Latham be in that conversation a year from now, earning at least one vote? Wright went from unranked to sixth in a single offseason. 

The path exists. Latham just has to go prove it. And the Tennessee Titans NEED him to do it.