Number 2 overall pick is a critical element of the 2025 season
To navigate around the NFL draft board, at all times, you must have an excellent poker face. Nothing can be revealed at any time. A player that your team covets just might be snatched by a conference – or worse, a divisional – opponent, just because they know you have that guy on laser focus mode.
Especially if it is a player or a position that they can immediately use, maybe just weren’t quite ready to draft that position that high. The bottom line becomes: helps us, depletes them.
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The Cleveland Browns own the #2 draft pick in the first round in this year’s NFL draft held April 24-26 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Tennessee Titans own the #1 overall selection while the New York Football Giants hold the #3 spot. All three teams finished 3-14-0 and alternate selecting the top slot in each round. The Browns select first in Round 2 while the Giants take the first pick in the third round.
Years ago, the team with the first overall spot would go ahead and sign their top pick and announce it. That strategy has long gone. Now, owners of the top slots dangle their position inside the pyramid to other teams in an effort to attract a trade partner that may be willing to let go of high-round draft picks in order to move up in the draft process and mortgage the farm in the process.
That is the reason why the Titans have not revealed who they are taking at the top spot. They certainly know who they are taking. The trick is, to not allow anyone else to know. Tennessee wants to bob the lure in the hopes that somebody will want to move up while the Titans don’t slide too far and end up with an equally monumental draft pick in the process.
No news has come that the Titans are trading the pick. Therefore, it is assumed they are keeping it. And selecting……who?
On the first day of free agency, they just may have tipped off the Browns.
But first, let’s do a little digging.
In the 2024 NFL draft, the Titans took RT J.C. Latham of Alabama with the seventh-overall pick in Round 1. Latham had been named First Team All-SEC.
In the 2023 draft, Tennessee chose LG Peter Skoronski of Northwestern with the 11th overall pick in Round 1 who was named First Team All-Big 10 two years in a row, voted the Big 10 Offensive Lineman of the Year, and Unanimous All-American. Later in Round 6, they took OT Jaelyn Duncan, who was invited to the Senior Bowl.
In 2021, the franchise drafted RG Dillon Radunz from North Dakota State in the second round.
On the first day of free agency last year, the Titans signed C Lloyd Cushenberry, who was named to the PFWA NFL All-Rookie Team in 2020.
All they needed was a left tackle. On the first day of free agency yesterday, Tennessee signed LT Dan Moore, Jr. to an $82 million deal after the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted him in the fourth round in 2021.
Photo by Nick Cammett/Getty Images
Who is the Titans’ offensive line coach? Former Browns O-Line coach Bill Callahan who is arguably the group’s best position coach in the NFL.
And if a franchise is methodically building one of the best young offensive lines in the league with an elite position coach at the helm, what does that offense need?
An elite quarterback.
Taking Miami’s Cam Ward with the second overall pick would be a sprint to the podium for the Browns. The second-ranked QB, however, Shedeur Sanders, is not worthy of the #2 pick according to many. He might be an option with the first pick in Round 2, but not the second overall selection in Round 1.
The Titans may have shown Cleveland who they are taking with the #1 pick.
Full clip of Schefter saying he isn’t confident Cleveland is taking a QB
Now you know why Adam Schefter has changed his stance on the Browns taking a quarterback at #2. He was convinced the Titans would take Penn State DE Abdul Carter, which would leave Ward for the Browns. He also knows that Sanders is not worthy of such a high spot and is, therefore, not a fallback option for the Browns.
But now we know who Tennessee will take after signing Moore.
“And with the first pick in the 2025 NFL draft, the Tennessee Titans select, Cam Ward, quarterback, University of Miami.”
The Cleveland Browns are now on the clock.