NASHVILLE – Fernando Carmona was a 6-foot-4, 225-pound tennis player in high school, so he was easy to spot at the net.
And, from a distance.
So, when his high school tennis team practiced at the same time the football team was practicing back then, he'd have to hear about it.
"Every afternoon the football players would yell at me from across the gate: "Come join us! Come join us!," Carmona recalled. "I was like, 'Nope, I'm fine playing tennis."
Eventually, Carmona swapped his tennis racket for a football helmet. It's a sport his father played, and his brother. The fact his cousin's husband was the high school football coach at the time also helped convince him to make the change.
"Sometime my junior year during summer," Carmona recalled, "I looked at my brother and was like, "Let's go to Burlington and get me some cleats. I want to go play football."
The rest, as they say, is history.
Carmona developed as a football player at Las Vegas High School, and he became a starter at San Jose State before transferring to Arkansas, where he started his final two college seasons.
The Titans drafted Carmona in the fifth round of the 2026 NFL Draft, and on Tuesday, Titans coach Robert Saleh officially announced him as the team's starting right guard after he won the competition in training camp.
"I thought he's done an outstanding job," Saleh said of Carmona. "We gave him the opportunity to step in there and show what he can do, and when he got in that spot, he just wouldn't relent. And credit to him, he's a mauler, he's a fighter, he's a strainer. He's got a lot of work to do. As you guys know, he's going to see some of the best D-tackles in all of football, but I do think he's up for the challenge."
Titans General Manager Mike Borgonzi said Carmona has developed like the team thought, and hoped, he would.
"He's everything we thought he'd be – he's tough, he's physical," Borgonzi said. "But then he had an opportunity to run with the ones here a little bit in camp and I think he's done a nice job with it. There's always things with every player, but especially rookies, that they need improve on. But he's done a nice job.
"We all liked his skillset coming out in terms of his size, his strength. He's smart, he's tough. He brings a little bit of nastiness to that group. So, you never know with those guys. I mean that's such a characteristics position where, we've talked about this before with some of these guys, especially offensive line, where there's certain character traits that sometimes make up for some other deficiencies."
Now 6-foot-5, 316 pounds, Carmona admitted he had to learn how to play with that "nasty" reputation he earned. That's not something he needed playing tennis, of course.
"It's something I had to learn in college," he said. "Off the field I am a very friendly guy, and it is something you have to learn: When you cross these lines, all these guys can't be your buddies."
In practices, Carmona said he knows how to take care of his defensive teammates, even when he's competing with them.
On Sundays, while competing against other teams, he's all about being a bully.
"It took me a while in college to find that nastiness," he admits.
Now, Carmona has to get in the right mindset to play in his first NFL regular season game, against the New York Jets on September 13. The Titans hope it's the start of a long and successful career.
Carmona said it's been his goal since he started prepping for the NFL Combine.
"I knew I could play in this league, and I could be a starter," he said. "I've always had that belief in myself and that my work would lead me to that."
