A radio booth moment started it all when former longtime Spartan radio guy Kevin Richardson nudged broadcast partner David Fales toward something worth watching.
Sitting next to Fales during his first Spartan football radio call on August 26, 2023 at USC, Richardson pointed to the left side of SJSU’s offensive line and said, “Take a look at that left tackle.”
Fales, the most statistically dominant pure peak passer in modern San Jose State history, before his own NFL run, didn’t need long to process what he saw “Man, that guy is big time.”
The player in question was Fernando Carmona, then still figuring out how to plant his feet in pass protection. Richardson now calls Stanford football. Carmona now wears No. 66 for the Tennessee Titans.
A Richardson premonition back then, “He’ll be making six figures by year’s end. They just don’t make guys 6-5 300+ lbs. that run like him.”
From tennis whites to shoulder pads
Carmona didn’t grow up dreaming about offensive line.
He grew up on the tennis court and the basketball hardwood, a lanky teenager who by his own admission was not exactly a natural.
Football didn’t enter the picture at Las Vegas High School until his junior year in 2019 and it took some real persuading. His older brother George, who was coaching tight ends at the school at the time, pushed him to finally strap on pads. Carmona has laughed about the switch since, joking that there weren’t many 6’4” tennis players walking around at 260 pounds. He lined up at tight end that first season, put together a productive junior year and earned second-team All-Sunrise League honors.
Then COVID wiped out his senior season before he’d played more than a single year of organized football. Recruiting services still projected him as a tight end at the next level. Three stars, modest offers, and a set of self-shot workout videos posted online during the shutdown were what got San Jose State’s attention over a handful of Group of Five and FCS programs.
Building the foundation
The Spartans didn’t project him at tight end for long. Carmona moved to the offensive line as soon as he arrived on campus and by his redshirt freshman year in 2022 he was the starting left tackle, a job he held for parts of three seasons and 24 starts.
That stretch is where the “big time” comment from the radio booth started to make sense. A three-star tight end prospect turning into a durable, physical left tackle in the Mountain West isn’t a small jump. It’s the kind of development arc that gets scouts calling and coaches on other rosters taking notice.
The move to the SEC that followed wasn’t a leap of faith so much as a logical next step.
Carmona wanted a bigger stage to keep proving himself and Arkansas needed proven tackle depth. He started every game at left tackle in 2024 and helped the Razorbacks average nearly 460 yards a game, a top ten mark nationally.
In 2025, coach Sam Pittman shifted him inside to left guard, betting that his frame and temperament fit tighter spaces better than the open edge. The move paid off. Carmona allowed just one sack all season, earned second-team All-SEC recognition and wore a captain’s patch for a Razorbacks team that leaned on him up front.
A mistake he didn’t run from
Carmona’s college career wasn’t spotless.
During the 2024 Liberty Bowl win over Texas Tech, he was caught on video stepping on a downed defender’s ankle, a moment that went viral for all the wrong reasons. He didn’t dodge it. He posted a public apology within a day; taking responsibility and writing that he wasn’t that kind of player and would learn from it. Teammates and coaches who know him privately describe the same contradiction that shows up on tape: an ornery, chippy competitor between the whistles who turns into a soft-spoken, almost bashful teammate the second the pads come off. That “split personality,” nasty on Sundays and gentle everywhere else, is common among offensive linemen who make it. It’s rarer to see it this pronounced.
Watching Carmona walk off the Levi’s Stadium turf after his preseason start against the 49ers, pointing toward the section where his people were sitting, it was hard not to think back to that radio booth call from Richardson. The kid that recruiting services once pegged as a college tight end was now a 316 pound guard mixing it up in the trenches against an NFL front seven.
Tennessee spent a fifth round pick on him this spring because 49 college starts across two conference stops don’t happen by accident. A rough combine day didn’t scare off a franchise that values experience and finishing ability over measurables. After the game, Carmona stuck around to talk, the same grounded, easygoing kid this beat remembers hearing about years ago, just built bigger and standing on a bigger field.
Where this goes from here
Nothing about Carmona’s path has been a straight line and that’s exactly why his ceiling still looks high. Carmona has already proven he can retool his game at three different levels, from tight end to tackle to guard, without losing what makes him effective.
Carmona has already shown he can own a mistake publicly and not let it define him. And he has already given an NFL front office enough tape to bet on him as more than a camp body. None of that guarantees a long career. But a player who keeps getting better every time the level goes up, and keeps his head on straight when the spotlight turns unflattering, is the kind of player who sticks around.
Watching Carmona work that Titans sideline, pointing and smiling with a rookie’s energy, it’s easy to believe the best of Fernando Carmona is still ahead of him.