The Tennessee Titans offensive line hasn’t had the cleanest or most promising start to training camp.

It has now been one week of practices and Tennessee’s defensive line has certainly gotten the best of the new look offensive line. There has been a lot of pressure coming at Titans quarterbacks and few big holes for running backs Tyjae Spears and Tony Pollard.

For the first few days, this was easy to excuse because the offensive line is always at a disadvantage without pads. With no pads on, you can’t really showcase physicality.

When speaking with the media on Monday, Titans offensive line coach Bill Callahan previewed Tuesday’s practice as a big day for his group. Callahan believes firmly that he won’t be able to full evaluate a player until he has seen them in pads and in a game.

“I’ve reserved all my comments on the evaluation process until we’ve seen them in pads, seen them in a preseason game, interacted with them on the bench, and seen them make adjustments and seen how they handle the pressure of game day,” said Callahan.

Practices on Tuesday and Wednesday marked the first of those milestones. But unfortunately, there have still been some of the same issues up front for Tennessee going against Dennard Wilson’s aggressive defense.

Wilson is all about bringing pressure. It’s part of his defensive philosophy. It has been a lot for Tennessee’s offensive line to handle in camp up to this point, but Lloyd Cushenberry is one of many players who believe the Titans’ offensive line will be better for it in the long run.

“We’ve been seeing that since OTAs. If you see Coach Dennard’s background coming from Baltimore, that’s what they do,” said Cushenberry after practice on Tuesday. “We’ve been preparing for a lot of different looks and it’s going to help us going into the season because I don’t think there are going to be many third down looks thats going to challenge us ad much as they’ve challenged us so far.”

#Titans QB Will Levis up now.
Simulated drive from +30 yard line.

– Toss left to Pollard. Gain of 1
– Pressure by McCreary. Thrown away.
– Threaded needle up the seam to Chig. Big gain down @ 6

– Run by Pollard gain of 2
– SACK by Simmons
– SACK by Key
– FG is GOOD.

— AtoZ Sports Nashville (@AtoZSports) July 31, 2024

Like Callahan, I’m trying to withhold judgement about this group for as long as possible. After all, only one of the current starters on the offensive was a starter for the Titans last season (Skoronski).

It’s a new group going up against a particularly aggressive defensive front. Your projected starting right tackle, Nicholas Petit-Frere, remains on the shelf after an offseason knee surgery despite expectations from the coaching staff that he would be back by now. There’s no doubt that all of these things have contributed to the early struggles. But that doesn’t mean we can simply ignore them.

There have been an alarming number of sacks and tackles for loss during the full team period of practice. Jeffery Simmons, Arden Key, Harold Landry, and Sebastian Joseph-Day have all had success pressuring the quarterback. Kenneth Murray has been a TFL machine. Even some unexpected players like Shane Ray have started to turn heads.

There is still time to fix it, but I’m more concerned about the Titans’ offensive line now than I was before the pads came on.