Music City Miracles
The Tennessee Titans are hoping sophomore DT T’Vondre Sweat is an improved pass rusher in 2025
Tennessee Titans defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat strung together a quality rookie season in 2024. The No. 38 overall selection in last year’s draft entered the league with plenty of detractors, but ultimately played an impressive brand of football in Year One.
Sweat concluded his rookie campaign with 51 tackles while featuring in all 17 regular-season games. Conditioning was a question mark heading into the season. It proved to be a non-factor, with Sweat totaling 699 snaps, roughly 66.13 percent of Tennessee’s total defensive plays. The former Texas standout also added one sack and one fumble recovery to his statistical totals.
If there’s an area of Sweat’s skill-set that would benefit from improvement as a sophomore, it’s his pass-rushing production. Sweat’s ability to consistently impact the pocket was another pre-draft question he faced. The results were somewhat inconsistent in 2024. While the second-round rookie showed a routine ability to defeat blocks and get into the backfield, Pro Football Focus credited him with just two sacks (they round up from half-sacks) and 23 pressures.
PFF generally liked Sweat’s tape. They awarded him an acceptable pass-rushing grade of 64.7, but he had a much-better run-stopping grade of 75.0, leading to an excellent 76.0 score overall.
“It’s more about the consistency of performance,” Callahan said. “We’d like to see more from the pass-rush game. He has the ability to rush [the passer] for a man his size. That’s part of the emphasis for him, to affect the quarterback more. He’s a tremendous run defender. Part of it is improving his details and improving his ability to help affect the quarterback. Those are the things we’re looking for progression wise from him. He can be a three-down player. He has great ability to push the pocket. We’re looking for more of that from him.”
The Titans finished tied for 30th in sacks last season with just 32 QB takedowns. The pass-rush didn’t necessarily improve on paper either. Femi Oladejo, Dre’Mont Jones, and Lorenzo Carter were the offseason additions, but the Titans also subtracted 2024 sack leader Harold Landry III. If Tennessee’s pass-rush is going to be even league-average in 2025, it’ll require more production from Sweat.
