NASHVILLE – JC Latham is a big man, with big expectations attached to him.
A first-round pick of the Titans in the 2024 NFL Draft, Latham begins his second season as the team's starting right tackle after playing on the left side as a rookie.
Latham has big expectations himself, and he plans on doing his job with a physical style of play.
In fact, coaches have noticed Latham's physicality in training camp.
"The one thing that he's done that I don't feel like we saw a year ago is the physicality at which he plays," head coach Robert Saleh said of Latham. "He's at a really good weight so his foot speed is where we want it to be and we felt like he was always strong enough, but you combine the foot speed with the physicality that he is playing with and I mean he's moving people, he's strapping people at the line of scrimmage. The challenge for him is not to take his flowers. Right now, just stay on the grind, stay where he is, try to improve not only physically but mentally. But he's tracking to have a really nice year, he's just got to stay the course."
Latham, who is in the 347-pound range, said he's glad folks are noticing because it's been a bigger point of emphasis for him in camp.
"I think it's definitely making a conscience decision to play more physically," Latham said. "But the other end of it, when you looking to establish yourself not only as a player, or as a unit, as an offensive team or franchise, there is no revolution without bloodshed. So every single day you are going to step up and be as physical as possible, impose your will day in and day out. … Just playing with physicality every single play, through the whistle, is something we pride ourselves on and it's one of the pillars of our unit."
With 30 starts in his first two NFL seasons, Latham joined Jack Conklin, Chance Warmack, Michael Roos and Peter Skoronski as the franchise's only offensive linemen to accomplish that feat in the "Titans era."
He did so all before his 23rd birthday. Among NFL offensive linemen under 23 at the end of the 2025 regular season, Latham had the most career starts.
Heading into 2026, the Titans are counting on Latham being a big part of the offense's success, as a run blocker, and in pass protection.
It's safe to say he's trending in the right direction from a size, strength and physicality standpoint.
"I think it's always in there," Saleh said of Latham. "When we evaluated him coming out of college, we felt like he was a big, strong, athletic, physical human being, but it's all encompassing. He's always been massive, and that's what we've talked about with JC when we got here. … He's got elite work ethic. He's just got to be very conscientious (about his size). He can get as big as he wants to get, it's just going to affect his foot speed. So there's a balance of understanding that he's already plenty strong enough. How much can he work to keep his weight at a spot where he doesn't lose his strength, but he gains a bunch of speed? You don't want him to go down too much where he gains whole bunch of speed and loses power. So right now he's at a sweet spot and he's just got to be able to maintain that."
