A word of advice to NFL defensive linemen getting ready to go up against Tennessee Titans tackle JC Latham: Make sure he can see your teeth.

The Titans drafted Latham with the No. 7 pick in the 2024 NFL Draft on Thursday night to be the franchise's left tackle of the future. In Latham, they have a player who finds whatever reason he can to be personally offended by the opponents he has to block and runs with it until that opponent has a chunk of grass wedged in his face mask.

Following in the footsteps of legendary competitors Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, Latham says anything can be his "trigger." Anything. Playing right tackle instead of left tackle. Opponents looking confident. And the teeth thing.

"I don’t play with a grill in," Latham said at his introductory news conference Friday. "I remember it pissed me off the first time I saw a guy play with a grill in. It pissed me off thinking he cares more about how he looks than me. I took that as a lot of disrespect that the guy doesn’t think I’m an issue to worry about and he’s like, ‘I can dress up how I want to dress up because JC’s not a problem.’ Things like that trigger me."

Latham is a perfectly pleasant person when he's not triggered. But when he is, there's nothing that's going to stop him from his pursuit of dominance. He said Thursday night that he's willing to die on the field. He said Friday that it took him nearly two months to notice he had a high-ankle sprain after Alabama's loss in the semifinal of the College Football Playoff because he just kept training through it.

And apparently he blocks to a point where his hands are bleeding so frequently that he has to have a contingency plan ready.

"They tell me if you have blood on your hands you have to come out, so they make me wear gloves whenever my hands would get blood on them or whenever I’d get scratched up really bad," Latham said.

When asked if he can really squat 900 pounds, he proudly corrects to say he can squat 1,000 pounds. When asked about getting to know Titans offensive line coach Bill Callahan, he points out that their two-hour meeting before lunch on his pre-draft visit to Nashville led straight into that day's solar eclipse, making the afternoon doubly memorable.

He smiled through his entire news conference, flashing his own platinum-colored grill.

Not that he'd wear it during a game.

Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Disrespect Titans' 1st-round pick JC Latham, and he vows to bury you