The Tennessee Titans are adding a new piece to their wide receiver room. After the Carolina Panthers waived Shi Smith, who caught 28 passes for 400 yards  and two touchdowns in 23 games across his first two NFL seasons, Mike Vrabel scooped Smith up and added him to Tennessee's practice squad. The Panthers drafted Smith out of South Carolina in the sixth round of the 2021 NFL Draft. They waived him on August 29.

Shi Smith possesses solid measurables for an NFL wide receiver. He's on the shorter side, coming in at 5-foot-9, 186 lbs at his pro day, but he ran a 4.43 40-yard dash. In college, he racked up 174 catches, good for fourth in Gamecocks school history, and 2,204 receiving yards, ranking eighth at the school.

A native of South Carolina, this will be Smith's first time playing football out of the Carolinas. He was the No. 10 athlete in the class of 2017, per the 247Sports composite.

Smith was a member of the former head coach Matt Rhule's first draft class with Carolina. The same day the Panthers waived Smith, they parted ways with two other members of that draft class. Carolina let go of fifth-round cornerback Keith Taylor and sixth-round guard Deonte Brown.

As for the Titans, wide receiver has been a roller coaster of a position lately. Rather than paying A.J. Brown in the 2022 offseason, Tennessee traded him to the Philadelphia Eagles for a first-round pick, then used that pick to draft Arkansas product Treylon Burks, who possesses a similar physical profile to what the Titans were losing in Brown.

The same summer, they added former Los Angeles Rams WR Robert Woods. Woods now plays for the Houston Texans. Above all else, Tennessee signed future Hall of Famer DeAndre Hopkins this past summer. Now, they add Shi Smith to play alongside Hopkins and Burks.

Mike Vrabel knows this team's identity is run-focused. Derrick Henry is the centerpiece of the Titans organization. Given the Titans spend third-round picks on quarterbacks in back-t0-back drafts (Malik Willis and Will Levis), it looks like he wants to shift this team to a more-pass centric offense. The idea is that Smith will help with that once elevated from the practice squad.