Titans’ Keldric Faulk admits where he thought he’d be drafted in the 1st Round, why the Titans came up to get him in biggest value steal of the night
Nobody thought Keldric Faulk would be a Tennessee Titan, including Faulk himself. He explained where he thought he’d go, and why the Titans took him.
Keldric Faulk didn’t walk into the green room in Pittsburgh on Thursday night thinking he’d be flying to Nashville in a few hours.
I’m not sure the Tennessee Titans front office walked into their war room expecting to be calling Faulk’s cell phone that night either. But as GM Mike Borgonzi said at the end of the round, “When you see a player that you like, you just go up and get him.”
The Titans traded back up into the back of the 1st to land Faulk at pick 31, who they had reason to believe would be gone by pick 35. We got to meet both Carnell Tate and Faulk in-person in Nashville on Friday, and I asked them both where they honestly expected to wind up. Neither thought they’d be here, but they’re both happy to have been wrong.
Keldric Faulk was best value pick of the 1st Round
Tate’s answer about where he thought he’d land was the less interesting one, since he was only taken a few spots before everybody expected him to go. “I mean, my expectation, my goal, throughout this entire process, just go first round,” he told me Friday. He admitted both then and on Thursday in his first discussion with Nashville media that he was surprised to be drafted quite this high. The consensus media expectation was that he’d be a back-half of the top-10 selection. Chiefs GM Brett Veach mentioned Thursday night that Tate was the target of theirs whose selection solidified the decision to trade up for CB Mansoor Delane at 6.
Faulk was one of the biggest “faller” surprises of the round. The reason Titans fans probably didn’t hear much about him during the pre-draft process is that he was unanimously expected to come off the board directly in-between the Titans’ first and second selections. Based on the consensus big board, Faulk was the steal of the round. Borgonzi landed Faulk double-digit picks later than we thought he would go.
The reaction to the selection was overwhelmingly positive on value alone. Faulk wasn’t everybody’s favorite EDGE in the first round due to his run-stopping focus and lack of sack production last year, but there was no debate over him being worth a top pick for his traits, character, and tremendous room for growth.
Faulk thought he’d go earlier too. When I asked him where he honestly thought he’d get drafted, he hesitated to answer.
“I’m already here now, honestly,” he began. But then he spilled: “I thought I was going, like, anywhere from Dallas to Buffalo to Minnesota, really.” That’s anywhere from 12 (Dallas), to 18 (Minnesota), to as late as 26 (Buffalo). Name-dropping those three teams surely wasn’t a mistake. They likely expressed real interest in him in the pre-draft process due to the fit he could have been. But each ultimately passed. The Titans didn’t at 31, even though they had minimal facetime with the young rusher.
“Here, like, I had one formal interview, and I really didn’t have a whole lot of communication with them throughout the whole draft process,” Faulk explained. “But my agents were telling me, it do be the teams that don’t talk to you that be the ones that draft you.”
His minimal interaction with the Titans did stand out, however. There’s already an established connection between Faulk and his new position coach. “And luckily,” he continued, “I had a really good interview with coach Aaron (Whitecotton). Shoot, man, that’s like my dog. So we already tight. So luckily I had a really good interview with him, and then they came and got me.”
Whitecotton is who put Faulk through his drills at the Auburn Pro Day.
Clearly, the Titans’ new DL coach liked what he saw. Now, he and Saleh are tasked with getting the most out of him.