NFL Week 1 Game Preview and Predictions: Tennessee Titans at Denver Broncos

Welcome back to HQ Spotlight. The number one overall pick, Cam Worv, is primed for his NFL debut this weekend, taking on the Broncos in the Mile High City. You know, Ward has been praised for his poise and preparation during the preseason, but he knows the challenges of the opposing defense he’s set to face. Denver inking deals with Patan the second most recently as well. Nick Bonito Ward not being naive about the challenges, but he is excited to face them head-on. They’re very set on. They’re not going to beat themselves. Um, it’s a very good defense. Uh, they do a lot of different things up front and coverage wise that you got to be ready for. Um, at the end of the day, we got to, you know, make plays in the run game. I got to put the put the ball in the players in my playmakaker’s hands, you know, let those guys make plays for us. Easier said than done, I would imagine. But let’s talk about his debut with our good friends Mike Rener and Ryan Wilson. Gentlemen, we saw the preseason. No touchdowns for Cam Ward in the preseason, but Ryan, I’ll come to you first. What are the realistic expectations as he gets those first QB1 reps? Hey Haley. Hey Mike. Good to see you guys. Look, Cam Ward was not bad in the preseason and you always have to take that with a grain of salt, but he didn’t play at a level where you look, okay, this this is not going to work out. He did all the things that you would ask him to do uh when you’re facing vanilla defenses and you’re not out there very long. The other thing unfortunately though is when you look going back to 2020, which is the Joe Burrow draft, 14 quarterbacks were drafted that started as rookies as first round picks going back to 2020. 12 lost their openers. Uh the only guys who won uh were Tuotanga Baloa and Caleb Williams. And you could argue that the results have been mixed uh in their career since. That said, uh when you talk about this quarterback class, I think Mike would probably agree. No one had uh the chip on their shoulder and the leadership skills like uh Cam Ward did coming out. We obviously had the conversations about Shadore, what he could and couldn’t do, and why. I I think with Cam Ward, even though he’s only 61, he has a big arm. He’s a better athlete than we can give him credit for. and we’ve seen him go to program after program, Washington State and the U, and elevate those teams to levels they weren’t previously at. That said, this is the NFL. This roster has a lot of holes and coming off a two- win campaign. So, I think it’s going to be a crawl before you walk, but I think we’re going to see glimpses. I just don’t know if it’s going to come in week one. Yeah, with Ward, there’s two things I just really want to see. One is comfortability because one hallmark of his game wherever he’s gone is the man’s looked very comfortable. So, if he looks uncomfortable, something’s wrong. something’s going wrong there behind the scenes and then two is just improvement over the course of the season. Can he battle through adversity because flat out it ain’t going to be great there in Tennessee. We know this isn’t a team ripe for a big year one sort of turnaround. So, can he battle and show improvement over the course of the season? If you get those two things, in my opinion, you’re going to have a franchise guy. We both loved him coming out, me and Ryan did. And it’s because of his ability to be a leader to change the culture, which they desperately need there in Tennessee. 39 touchdowns, over 4,300 passing yards a year ago in college. But we know that the NFL is a completely different beast. And I think a lot of times for quarterbacks, Ryan, they’re judged heavily, but they’re also only as good as the pieces around them. And when you look at the rest of this offense and you look at the depth chart, I mean, you’ve got Tony Pard, who had a down year last year. Calvin Ridley, we know what he is capable of. Tyler Lockett as well. Those are the featured names. Do you think that’s enough for Ward to be successful? No, the offensive line they added Dan Moore. They’ve drafted two players in JC Laam and Pet Peter Scaransky who I think are going to continue to get better and they battled uh offfield issues. Peter Scarinsky had the the injury issue and JC Laam moved from the right to left to the right. Now he’s back uh to the right. But no, that the short answer is no. I I think you’re going to need some guys to step up, especially guys that they’ve drafted. They do have Chicka Conqua who’s an athletic tight end who hasn’t quite reached his potential. They drafted Gunnar Helma, a tight end out of Texas, who was a big part of that offense on a team loaded with offensive players a year ago for the Longhorns. So, there’s going to have to be a uh rising tide lifts all boats situation. And by that, I mean it’s going to have to be all these guys helping out their young quarterback early on until he can get his feet set. But Mike talked about it. This roster is not great and it’s going to it’s going to be a process. Now, I like Brian Callahan as the head coach and I think he’s been successful at previous stops. Uh, but it’s also the case where this isn’t a situation where you’re walking in to a team that’s just one one player away and that one player happens to be a quarterback. There’s a lot that needs to happen over the next, forget the next week, the next 17 18 weeks for the Titans. Tennessee 9 and 32 over their last 41 games. That is the worst in the NFL since week 12 of 2022. So, uh, the good news is, gentlemen, it can only go up from here. The bad news is is we heard Kim Ward talk about the defense that they’re getting ready to face with this Broncos team and really the team in general just feels very complete. But I do want to start and just talk about the expectations, Mike, and I’ll come to you first here. What are the expectations for Shawn Peyton going into this next year? Man, for me at least, they’re sky-high. I have them winning the West. I I think this team is built to unseat the Chiefs in that division. Maybe not necessarily win a championship just yet, but I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility because this was the best pass defense in the NFL a season ago. They added two new starters to that secondary, a new starter at linebacker. And then you have your quarterback going from year one to year two, the biggest leap a quarterback will make over the course of his career, and he was pretty darn good already as a rookie. Got them to the playoffs. So, a lot of arrows pointing up for this team. I I think they should be they should not be that far behind as you see there on the screen there the Chiefs when the season’s all said and done. Haley, shout out to Mike because he was on the Bow Knicks bandwagon before anyone else was and uh Bicks has played very much like that 12th overall pick and you could say well Shawn Peyton has something to do with that. Uh Bon Knicks has something to do with that as well. And the other thing I’ll say about this Broncos team 18 months ago there were fewer teams with more questions than the Denver Broncos. Fast forward to where we are today. There are very few teams that have as few holes as the Denver Broncos. They have uh George Peyton, the GM, and Shawn Peyton have done a fantastic job of restocking this roster quickly, doing it while still having to pay Russ Wilson after they moved on from him. And and to Mike’s point, they are going to challenge the Chiefs, and they’re going to challenge him in a very serious way. Look, Bodicks may not turn out to be Payton Manning in year two, but the fact that he did what he did in year one, there’s no reason to believe he’s going to regress to the point where they can’t operate that offense at a high level now in 2025. Bo Nicks, the second most passing touchdowns and third most total touchdowns by a rookie all time last season. But Ryan, something you mentioned that is kind of alarm bells for the Broncos fan base is that sophomore slump, right? We we’ve been saying it with Jane Daniels. We don’t know what to expect. So, what is the ceiling? What is that next step that he can take to avoid the sophomore slump? Ryan, well, one of the things about Bick’s coming out is that he had played a ton of football. And when you talk to folks when he was at Auburn, there wasn’t a lot of positive things to say about him. And I think that had less to do about Bo and more to do about the situation. Once he got to Oregon, everything changed and and in addition to not only the way he led that team, but the way he played and and the manner in which he carried himself and how he ended up being that 12th overall pick. Look, we saw last year on the sidelines, he was happy and and certainly willing to give Shawn Peyton more than an earful if they were in disagreeing about something. And I appreciate that sort of edge in your leader in your young quarterback. And he may be a little bit older as a quarterback coming out. That’s what you want. Just like Jaden Daniels, you see there on that list. I don’t, as I just mentioned, I don’t envision a situation, if everyone stays healthy, where Bo Knicks regresses because we know who Bo Knicks is. This isn’t an Anthony Richardson, we have no idea how this is going to work out situation. Bicks is as relatively steady as they come when you’re talking about young quarterbacks. So, I think the arrows pointing up and I would be hardressed to to believe a story where this team isn’t one of the best teams in the AFC. Yeah, I’m in complete agreement with Ryan. Two big reasons why. one, he has more weapons this year. They may not be a drastic improvement, but he has more. Guys like Evan Ingram, guys like R.J. Harvey, there is more at his disposal, Pat Bryant, the third rounder, than there was a year ago. And two, if there’s one thing we know about Bon Knicks, he has improved every single year of his career, even the three years at Auburn and then the two years at Oregon. Every single year, there is incremental improvement in some way, shape, or form. That’s how he ended up being a firstrounder after being this guy that people laughed out of Auburn. And that’s why I don’t think he’s going to regress from year one to year two. He just works too hard at his craft. I will say that I was covering Bo Knicks in that final year when he was at Auburn working in local news and it was so interesting the swing between Bo Knicks is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to this program to get him out of here. We can’t see it. So, it is interesting he’s kind of had that dynamic since going back to those Auburn days. And I think that those fans are just a little tough to please there, but we’ll save that for another day. I do want to get into some impact players for you guys. Ryan, you have talked ad nauseium about Bo Knicks and why he is going to be an impactful guy for this team. So, Rener, I want to come to you. Who’s a guy that you’re looking at uh to be impactful specifically in this game? It’s the newest paid edge rusher for the Broncos, Nick Bonito, $100 million man because he’s going up against Dan Moore, the guy who led the league in sacks allowed that the Titans kind of were forced to sign this off seasonason because there was no other better options than free agency. And thing is, he has a bum ankle. He didn’t practice earlier this week. He may not even be playing. So, if it’s not him and you’re trying to get a backup to block Nick Bonito, hey, good luck, Kim Ward, your very first NFL start. This guy gets home in a blink of an eye. Uh, yeah, Nick Bonito is my player to watch. It’ll certainly be interesting. And I will emphasize Ryan Wilson is riding the bows train. That is his impact player to watch in this game. Guys, we appreciate the time. Uh, we’ll see how it all shakes out. It is certainly exciting to have NFL back in the mix. And of course it returns to CBS on Sunday. Of course we’ve been talking about the revenge game. Steelers at Jets 1:00 Eastern. You also have the Lions Packers 4:25. Our NFL Plus NFL Today Plus crew is going to be at that game. I’ll get that right eventually. All right.

Ryan Wilson and Mike Renner join CBS Sports HQ Spotlight to preview the Week 1 NFL matchup between the Tennessee Titans and Denver Broncos.

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