The Titans’ top two offseason acquisitions on defense came with injury tags, and each will begin the team’s training camp out of practice. Tennessee placed Bud Dupree on its active/PUP list and parked first-round pick Caleb Farley on its non-football injury list Saturday.
Both can be removed from these respective lists at any point during camp, and each designation was expected. Dupree is coming off a December ACL tear, while Farley missed Tennessee’s minicamp while recovering from offseason back surgery. Were Dupree to land on the Titans’ reserve/PUP list to start the regular season, he would miss the team’s first six games.
Dupree did not offer any clarity on his rehab timetable recently, and given the recovery time for ACL tears, it would not surprise if the ex-Steeler sack artist was held out of camp. Despite the injury and the pandemic-induced salary cap reduction, the Titans gave Dupree a five-year, $82.5MM deal that included $33.8MM fully guaranteed.
Farley has now undergone two back surgeries, with the second coming in March. The first-round cornerback initially encountered lower-back trouble while training ahead of Virginia Tech’s 2019 season, and after he excelled that fall to vault onto the first-round radar, the malady ended his second and final Hokies season early. Farley opted out of the 2020 season, but the Titans — as they did with Jeffery Simmons in 2019 — bet on talent and selected the standout defender 22nd overall. Farley received an NFI designation because his injury occurred before he entered the NFL.
In better Titans news, both A.J. Brown and Taylor Lewan avoided any injury-related designations heading into camp. Brown underwent surgery on both knees this offseason; Lewan is coming back from an ACL tear.