Titans front office makes bizarre roster decision in order to hoard talented depth on initial 53-man roster, following NFL trend

The Tennessee Titans finalized their initial 53-man roster by the 3:00pm CDT deadline on Tuesday, and “final” it absolutely was not. Less than two hours later, it was announced that they were signing former Carolina Panthers DT Shy Tuttle, who was cut earlier that day.

He’s presumably taking Timmy Horne’s spot as DT5 on this roster, and he won’t be the last newcomer to join this team. Tennessee has the 1st waiver claim, meaning they get first dibs on any non-vested player who was cut. 

Needless to say, this initial roster is going to change quite a bit between now and opening day. Mike Borgonzi and his front office staff are hard at work looking for ways to upgrade this roster. And things on the initial roster that seem a little off, well, there’s a good chance they are.

That brings us to the offensive line. Across all the roster projections by all the smart people covering this team, we disagreed on which back-end guys would get in and whether there would be 9 or 10 of them. But I’m not sure anybody saw them finishing with 11 on the active roster after cutdown day. They kept five tackles? Really? Yes, really. And they have a very good reason for it.

Keeping 11 Offensive Linemen Follows League Trend

Heading into the cuts, the discussion was largely between OTs Oli Udoh and John Ojukwu. Who would win the battle to be the swing tackle? Which skillset would the team rather keep? Which would be easier to get to the practice squad? And then there was the question of general tackle depth. We know Blake Hance is seen as a Swiss Army knife on this OL, able to survive at four of the positions. But he’s at his best as a guard. So does he really count as a second swing tackle option? Is that good enough to roll through the season with, having just one and a half backup tackle options?

I shared in my final roster prediction article that the team would love to keep both, but the roster math would be tricky. I also said that it wouldn’t be surprising to see them keep both initially and then drop one to the practice squad when a claim at another position was made, in order to shield them from potentially landing elsewhere.

Well, the Titans took this tackle hoarding concept and turned it up to 11. They ended up keeping five tackles: starters JC Latham and Dan Moore, and then Udoh, Ojukwu, and UDFA rookie Brandon Crenshaw-Dickson. BCD, as I’ll refer to him for the sake of readability, was somebody the front office and coaching staff was clearly pleased with this camp. I certainly felt he was a practice squad lock, I just didn’t think they’d possibly entertain keeping 11 linemen. In hindsight, that was foolish given the recent behavior league-wide with valuable linemen.

The truth of the matter is that the NFL is desperate for players merely shaped like offensive tackles, let alone decent OT play, let alone real upside of any kind. The bar is low, and the have-nots of the league are so desperate. This is why you’ve seen recent trades such as this one:

And this one:

And this one too:

Teams that need help at tackle are spending real draft capital on players you’ve probably never heard of. Why? Because you just can’t find anybody at the position out there. When a team has guys, they hoard them or sell them. Nobody parts with them.

And that’s why the Titans hoarded every somewhat serviceable tackle they have. Because they know those guys will be hard to bring back once practice squad if they cut them now. So they’re willing to do something roster gymnastics to shield them from other teams, and the waiver system in particular. Will they roll into this year with all these linemen? I’d be shocked if they did. I thought BCD was a practice squad lock, and I still do. I won’t be surprised to see two of these guys moved down, in fact. The Titans are just going to buy time to make it less likely another team add them to their active roster right before the season. And with how valuable tackles are in 2025, they’re smart to do so.