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Titans and top rookie get the domino to fall with the rest of the league that they’ve been hoping would come before training camp

Originally posted on A to Z Sports | By Easton Freeze | Last updated Jul 17, 2025 7:15 PM ET

Finally, there’s some light at the end of the NFL’s 2nd Round draft pick holdout tunnel. And it’s fantastic news for the Tennessee Titans and their newest, youngest edge rusher.

If you haven’t paid much attention to this ongoing situation, let me catch you up to speed. Click the link here for the last two breaks in this story in much greater detail. But to make a long story short, nearly the entire 2nd round of the 2025 NFL draft has remained unsigned all summer. 30 2nd rounders were nearly all that was left to get officially under contract with their respective teams this year, and that’s no fluke: it has to do with guaranteed money in contracts.

Rookies have pre-determined rookie pay scales by the order in which they’re selected in the draft, as determined by the collective bargaining agreement agreed to by both the NFLPA and league owners. You can Google exactly how much a guy is going to get in his rookie contract the moment he’s signed if you want to. So what is there to actually negotiate? Just some finer details of language, structure, and most important to this story, guarantees.

Fully guaranteed rookie contracts have slowly crept up through the entire 1st round of the draft, and have made their way into the 2nd. And here’s the rub. The Texans and Browns handed those kinds of contract out to their picks at 33 and 34 overall early in the process. That was weeks and weeks ago, and the metaphorical line for one of them big ones has been hung up on Seahawks rookie, S Nick Emmanwori.

So we’ve had a standoff for most of the summer, with the 30 remaining 2nd round picks standing strong, together, to see how many of them could get fully guaranteed contracts as well. But this week—the final week before most training camps begin—the dam has finally broken.

By the time you’re reading this, it’s likely even more of these guys have signed their 2nd round contracts. Because on Wednesday, the domino we were all waiting on finally fell in the form of 49ers rookie Alfred Collins.

The next big domino in the second round has fallen: 49ers’ second-round pick Alfred Collins, the No. 43rd overall selection, reached agreement tonight on a four-year, $10.3 million deal that includes over $9 million guaranteed and now is expected to trigger multiple second-round… pic.twitter.com/iiIWgOCh7p
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) July 17, 2025

He signed his contract with roughly 90% of it guaranteed, a nice consolation prize for the 43rd overall pick. He and his agent apparently figured they wouldn’t get the full guarantee that far down the list (at least, not yet…) and so they got him signed up before training camp. Shortly after him, the Bears got both of their second rounders signed too. First was Shemar Turner, the 62nd overall pick.

The #Bears and second-round DT Shemar Turner have agreed to terms on his four-year rookie contract, source says, as the logjam slowly begins to open up. pic.twitter.com/d7Xkjgcduy
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 17, 2025

Then we heard about Ozzy Trapilo, the 56th overall pick. He’s the fifth 2nd rounder to sign at the time of the writing of this article, which is almost certainly missing some new additions to the signing list by the time you’re reading it.

The Bears have agreed to terms with second-round OT Ozzy Trapilo, per source. He's the fourth second-round pick to sign—and he's doing a four-year deal with the first two years fully guaranteed, and the third year 72% guaranteed.

He'll be in the left tackle mix this summer.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) July 17, 2025

How does this impact the Titans? It means 52nd overall pick, EDGE Femi Oladejo, can sign and come to training camp. See, rookies who aren’t yet signed can participate in team activities early in the summer by signing temporary, good-faith insurance deals. These act as placeholders before getting an official contract signed that protects the players enough to let them risk bodily harm at practice. But once training camp rolls around, they can’t participate until they’re officially signed.

Do I know Femi won’t continue to hold out? Not for certain, no. But everything about his time in Tennessee so far tells me that he and his agent have been acting as good soldiers for the rest of the 2nd round, waiting for the dam to break. And now that it is, I expect him to be signed and ready to roll by next week. He and the Titans could both really benefit from him being out there, not missing a moment of this critical period for rookies.

This article first appeared on A to Z Sports and was syndicated with permission.

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