The Tennessee Titans officially named Fernando Carmona their starting right guard, and the rookie’s path to this point deserves more credit than it has received. 

Carmona didn’t play football until his junior year of high school. Before that, he was a 6-foot-4, 225-pound tennis player in Las Vegas, playing doubles. He was a tight end in high school, then developed into an offensive tackle at San Jose State before transferring to Arkansas to play tackle and then guard his final year. Now he’s a day one starter in the NFL as a rookie.

What is the ceiling for Carmona? He’s 24 years old, so he’s not a traditional “young” prospect, but he’s still a first-year player at a position where guys routinely play into their 30s. Did the Titans just find a tennis-player-turned-diamond-in-the-rough to play opposite guard Peter Skoronski for years to come?

Carmona’s ceiling lives in his mentality

Carmona is a fine athlete for the NFL, but he’s not someone you look at and say the quickness, the strength, or the size are top shelf. Plenty of Pro Bowlers, All-Pros, and Hall of Famers weren’t the greatest athletes in the world. They were smarter, more tenacious, and nastier than the guy across from them.

That’s where Carmona firmly lives if he’s going to become an above-average starting guard in this league. The Titans won’t stop talking about how nasty a player he is. That’s how he approaches the game, and that’s what general manager Mike Borgonzi said Tuesday. From a personnel standpoint, Tennessee is choosing Carmona because he has that nastiness, the same edge JC Latham brings. It pairs well on the right side of the offensive line, it matches the team’s identity, and the coaching staff plans to make that mentality the cornerstone of who he is as they build him into an NFL player.

A day 3 pick winning a starting job is surprising and not surprising at the same time

During the day 3 draft livestream, the expectation was that picks like Carmona would be developmental pieces. Fast forward to September and he’s the starting right guard. That’s wild.

Two things can be true. It’s surprising because of the trajectory, but it also makes sense because he put in the work and he’s a genuinely good fit. He beat out Cordell Volson and Jackson Slater for the job, and the competition wasn’t exactly a murderer’s row. Volson started four years for the Cincinnati Bengals, but he missed all of last season with a shoulder injury and wasn’t good before that. His body might be pastrami at this point.

Carmona’s body profile looks like a tackle playing guard, because he was a tackle. He’s longer and bigger compared to the shorter, fire-engine build of Slater. Slater is more of an athlete than Carmona, but Carmona next to JC Latham is a really good combo.

Take PFF rankings for whatever they’re worth. Carmona was ranked the second-best rookie of the entire preseason. If that means something to you, great. If not, it still supports the narrative and it’s still an accolade.

The ‘Bash Brothers’ of the Titans’ future

Carmona will likely be the fifth-best lineman on the roster, with him and Schlottmann competing for that distinction. But that fifth-best spot representing serviceable play is exactly what Tennessee has needed for a long time. It could take this offensive line from 26th or 27th in the league to maybe 15th or 16th, which would be a massive improvement.

If Fernando Carmona and JC Latham can figure it out and become consistent, those two are the Bash Brothers of the future. The Titans could run right all day long and have something to build around on that side.

Going into this offseason after the draft, there were legitimate concerns about waiting until day 3 for an offensive lineman. But if the Titans have a day 1 starter out of that investment, you can’t really complain. Carmona doesn’t look like he’s starting by default. He looks like he deserves it.

The Titans used to be the team that would pluck day 3 starters on the offensive line and find the value. They haven’t been that for a long time. Borgonzi is, fingers crossed, proving to be pretty good at this thing.