Is Cam Ward Still Trending in the Right Direction? | MCA Titans Podcast

Is Cam Ward Still Trending in the Right Direction? | MCA Titans Podcast

Is Cam Ward trending in the right direction? We think so. We’re going to talk about his latest performance, the offensive numbers under Mike McCoy since the Titans made the change to fire Brian Callahan, and why we have hope for this offense going forward. This is the Music City Audible. Let’s get to it. Uh, welcome everyone to another episode of the Music City Audible podcast presented by Sinkers Beverages, the premier wine, Spirits, and Beer Store in East Nashville in partnership with 440 Sports. I’m Justin Graver. With me as always, Justin Melo. Justin, we’re talking some Cam Ward today. How’s it going? I am doing well. Doing well. It’s funny, this was technically uh the planned episode for Monday. You know, we were going to talk about Cam Ward’s performance against the Colts, how the offense is trending, you know, yada yada, some in-depth numbers, but go ahead and ding me. Let’s get one right off the bat. But the Titans traded Roger McCreary on Monday, and we kind of ripped up the plan for the show and did an emergency reaction pod to that deal. Life works in mysterious ways, ladies and gentlemen, because I am glad we didn’t do the Cam Ward episode as planned because Nick Holtz spoke with the media on Tuesday. The coordinators had their weekly press conference and I thought we got some really good context from Nick Holtz. Uh, I’m glad we waited to do this episode because it really vindicated how I was feeling. I’m been patting myself on the back all morning. You’re so smart, Melo. Um, I ding me. We’re at a record ding. Two dings in less than two minutes into the stream. Uh, we’ll see how many. I am trying to have more dings in this episode than Titans have first downs this season. We’ll see if I could achieve it. It’s not going to take much. No, I thought you were going to say touchdowns, but yeah. Well, same thing. Yeah. You know, tomato tomato. I’m running on no sleep because I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. to watch the Blue Jays Dodgers World Series game. Yes, I was very disappointed. I stayed up the whole time. I couldn’t quit it. I couldn’t. That’s five hours past my bedtime, quite literally. But you’re never going to remember how tired you are the next day. You’re going to remember that you stayed up to watch your team lose in heartbreaking, disappointing fashion. Um, but getting back on track here, you know, we were talking we were talking about it on Heed the Call because we were recording our Monday Night Pod during the game and Clay when Clayton Kershaw came out in extras and got off the field or off the mound without giving up any runs or giving up the game, I guess. Um, Dan on he heed the call was like, “This is, you know, this is one of those legendary moments because they cut to Sandy Kofax clapping after Kershaw had a good inning. They’re the Dodgers are going to win now. Like that’s that’s how it works. So I’m really sorry for your Blue Jays, Justin, but that is out on it because the game went another six innings, right? It had very little to do with Clayton Kershaw, I think. No, but it’s not about Kershaw leading them to victory. It’s just how sports moments work. Yeah, the Jay could have said the same thing for if you had a Jay’s bias said Max Scherzer turning in a great start. The Jays are going to win that game. And it just it just the Jays lost that game. The Dodgers didn’t win it. That’s my biased take on it. The Jays took out all their good hitters and were left with a trip AAA lineup in uh in extras. But anyway, um I came out of Sunday’s loss to the Colts feeling pretty good about Cam Ward. I think we said that on the live stream. I I said that Cam Ward played a good game. You echoed that sentiment. I’m feeling even better about how I prepared this episode after hearing Nick Holtz speak at the podium because uh Nick Holtz called it probably Cam Ward’s best game of the season. Well, should we do our weekly grade of Cam Ward before we really get into these comments? Sure, we we we can do that and then I’m going to get into some of the numbers that I went and dug up, but you and I went back and forth only a little bit on this. We settled on a B minus, which is his which is tied for his second best grade of the season. Then again, he’s had multiple B minuses throughout the season. So, you might say this one might not stick out over some of the others, but I like the trajectory that he’s on right now. The Titans coaching staff feels the same way. We almost went with a B. The only B he’s had this year was the Arizona Cardinals win. you get rewarded for winning football games and you get rewarded for thrilling comeback performances, which was what that game was, and for scoring over 20 points, which the Titans haven’t done since that game. And yes, like that was the thing that stopped us, I think, from going higher than a B minus because it’s a weird it’s kind of a weird thing. Like I agree with Nick Holtz and we said it on the Sunday show that this was his best overall game, but at the same time, I don’t know, you get extra credit for going and leading a comeback victory, even if it took a little bit of luck to get there. And you get the blame, not the blame, but the anti-redit scores 14 points. And I know like it’s not all on Cam Ward. And there’s something I want to talk about when we get to the numbers in a bit with Cam Ward, but um it’s still like you have to find a way to put more points on the board. And if that means you have to go be a superhuman level player and like nobody’s expecting a rookie quarterback in his eighth game to go do the things that might be necessary to score more than 14 points with the state of this roster and coaching staff against that opponent. But we’re not grading him on the scale of this is a rookie in his eighth game. We’re grading him on what would we give Josh Allen for this game? What would we give Jaylen Herz and Lamar Jackson and all Patrick Mahomes for this game, you know, like we’re holding him to that high standard, even if it’s unrealistic at this time. So, all that to say, we settled on a B minus and I think it’s fair. If you disagree, let us know in the comments. And I would have felt a little bit too biased going with a B because as as good as I feel about this performance, it still had a turnover. uh still completed under 60% of his attempts. So, there are things you could nitpick, I think, and go uh B minus, but again, I I felt really good about it. Now, here are some of the random random analytical numbers that I uh dug up. Uh Pro Football Focus, two big time throws in this game, one turnover worthy play. I’m going to just n I don’t think there’s a way to find out. I’m going to naturally assume that was the interception because it wasn’t a tipped pass, right? like he got undercut on a on a play like it was a turnover worthy play. It was fourth and goal. They’re trailing by like three scores in the fourth quarter. I didn’t have a whole lot of issue with the throw, but it is a it it is properly quantified as a turnover worthy play, right? And remember, it was fourth and goal from distance because he kind of took a bad sack on third and goal. I I I didn’t blame him a ton for that one on Sunday. I still feel the same because they’re again, they’re down multiple scores. He extended the pocket. He’s trying to buy time and make a play at the end of a uh meaningless football game in all honesty. But two big turnover, two big time throws, one turnover worthy play. His average depth of target was 9.6 in this one. That was third highest of the season. That is a very good average depth of target. He had uh Titan receivers were credited with two drops. Pretty consistent theme in terms of receivers dropping the ball. Two is not an out insanely high number, but I wish it was zero. Um, here’s an interesting one that I kind of feel down the middle about. His average time to throw was actually his longest of the year. It was 3.14. On the surface, you don’t love that because you want that number to kind of come down. And we’ve talked about the challenges that he’s occasionally had with kind of, you know, letting it rip and going through progressions. But I I I can see you nodding your head. And I agree with you because I thought he actually made some good plays while holding on to the football in this game. Like I don’t know this for sure, but I would wager the one that he held on to the ball for the longest was probably the one where he ran to the sideline, ran to the sideline, kind of bought time, and then found Taj Spears on like a a com like that was a really long time if I recall correctly that he held on to that ball. That was the one that he held on to the longest and threw it. The one that he held on to the longest was the third and goal where he took the sack. Yeah, I should have qualified that. Yeah, we’re actually threw it. The third the third and goal for sure. And again, we just I don’t want to say we excused it, but we can we get it right. Third and goal is trying to make a play in a blowout. And I think to on the time to throw thing like Cam Ward has talked about this and now this was a long time ago. This is before he was in the NFL. This is when I don’t remember when this was either during the draft process or still during the season at Miami. talked about the difference between getting rid of the ball quickly because you have to and getting rid of the ball quickly because you can and talked about like understanding his protection and saying like if I can hold the ball a little bit longer to make a big play happen, I’m going to do it. And the Titans actually despite giving up four sacks in this game. I think two of them were like instant sacks on the offensive line and the other two were more on CAM um actually protected pretty well for the majority of the game outside of a handful of a handful of snaps. So that’s okay to use to maximize your protection and make plays like that one you’re talking about to Taj Spears and and especially when your offense is bad and you like need to create big plays somehow like I don’t I’m not going to hold that time to throw number against him because I think it’s like he’s conscious of it. It’s not like he’s sitting in the pocket holding the ball because he doesn’t know where to go with it and he’s not reading the defense and he’s just holding it too long. Like there’s a difference between that and it’s going to sound like there’s people out there who are already out on Cam Ward. To those people, it probably sounds like I’m just making excuses for him, but this is a legitimate thing. I said it in April when we when we were talking about drafting Cam Word. Like I’ve said this for a long time. This is part of who he is. And I like that about him. There was a question of if that mentality would translate to the NFL. And I think we’re seeing mixed results, but for the most part, it kind of has. And yeah, I mean, look, I’m fully with you because I I came out of this game, I never felt like he was consistently holding on to it too long or uh sort of making errors in judgment with the way that he was distributing the football. The final two stats I have here that are Cam Ward centric or Cam Ward only stats, I should say. Um, his passer rating was 76.5, his fourth highest of the season. What’s notable to me is it was his third straight game with a passer rating of 76 or greater. Now, I believe it was actually lower than the previous two, but it it still measures growth in my opinion that he’s sort of on this trajectory of uh basically his best passer rating outputs of the season have all come in recent in recent streams. And before I before you interject because this one I have the ratings. I have the ratings if you want them the last three games. I I know they were one of them was really high. 81.3 against the Raiders, 92.2 against the Patriots, and then yeah, 76.5. So three straight of 76 or greater. Now I’m going with 76 cuz this one was 76.5. The other two were a lot higher than that. The adjusted QBR, which is a ESPN advanced stats, if you will. Um, this is maybe both sad and positive. I don’t know how to put it. It was 40.5. Um, it was his best of the season. The adjusted QBR was his best of the year according to if if you take that number from ESPN. So, again, say what you want about it, but I do think we can put all of this together and say this is growth. The last Cam Ward number I’ll throw in, I went and looked it up this morning. We’ve talked a lot about big-time throws, turnover worthy plays. The turnover worthy play percent after this week is at 2.3, I believe. And I’m like 99.9% sure because I I you know, I played I funked with the numbers a little bit. Uh funked. I said I funked with the numbers a little bit. No cursing, maybe. Eighth lowest among starting uh full-time starting quarterbacks in the NFL this year. Eighth lowest. And some of the only guys that I believe were lower were like Josh Allen, Dak Prescott. I think I included Lamar Jackson in that. maybe I shouldn’t have. And uh Justin Herbert as well were some of the guys with the lower turnover worthy play percent. So I know Mariota’s in that group too. Well, maybe not after last. I’m not counting him, right? Because I’m talking I said full-time starting quarterbacks, right? Hang on. I’m I’m going to sort right now by minimum drop backs 20%. Even that though, that’s what I did. But you should still eliminate some of the ones. Maybe 50%. Yeah, at 50% he’s tied for eighth lowest. So there you go with Bo Nicks. Yeah, like that. That’s a really good place to be in terms of turnover worthy play percent. So, I thought it was really encouraging that, you know, we felt the same way that Nick Holtz did. The one uh most notable miss was the deep ball to Alec Manor that he didn’t connect on uh that he got visibly upset at Alec Manor after that rep. Uh Nick Holtz talked about it on Tuesday and he gave the answer that I think both you and I gave on the Sunday live stream. So, he said exactly what we said. It made me so proud of us, Justin. Yeah, it really did. He said essentially um you know, Ward’s got to put more air under the ball. That’s how I felt. And that manner’s got to run full speed. He kind of slows down at some point. And that he said they’re both to blame and that they’re both taking ownership of it right now. And you like to see that for young player. The most interesting thing that he might have said, and I might be t I don’t know if I’m taking this out of context. I don’t know for sure if this is how he meant to say it, but it sounded like to me that he said if even one of them did one of those things differently, they probably connect. Pretty sure that’s how he meant it. And that would be in line with my assessment. If there’s more air on it or manner runs full speed the whole time, it’s probably still a completed pass even though the other party still made a mistake. Right. And he also said making that mistake to miss, right? And and he also said it’s just two rookies, you know, learning and trying to make a play and missing on the opportunity to make a big play and they’re going to learn from it. And I think that’s sort of a theme I have coming out of this game for Cam Ward is I counted four plays that I would grade as negative for Cam Ward in this game. One of them was the first drop back of the game where he has Alec Iman wide open in the flat and I’m not sure why, but his eyes never go there. I think if I had to guess, he didn’t get the coverage he was expecting because he’s looking for like a little sit route like 8 8 to 10 yards down the field, maybe a little like just across the first down marker and he’s just like locked on to that and he never comes off of it. And that makes me think the defense did something he wasn’t expecting them to do. And his eyes never go to the flat where I manner has potentially has room to run after the catch and he almost takes a sack and he ends up getting the ball out to like Tony Pard or something and it just bounces harmlessly to the ground. But it was a dangerous play. It was a weird play because I feel felt like Ward should have read that better. And he bounces back on the next play, third and 10, and rips an anticipation ball into a zone window to Shimmer DK for the first down. And it’s like, okay, I’m going to say that that play was just some something happened that he wasn’t expecting. And it’s not any kind of indicator of him struggling to read the defense or whatever because on the very next play, he converts a big third and 10. The other three negative plays, one of them was the third and goal sack. I mean, you can’t say that that’s not a negative play, even if we understand where his mindset is at trying to make a play late in a losing game after your coach has already punted on two fourth downs that he should have gone for. You never know in your quarterback’s mind, especially when he’s yelling at the coach, the f are we doing? Why aren’t we going for it? Like, um maybe he was thinking, I need to make a play here because we’re not going to go for it. But even so, he’s got to throw that ball away. The third one is um throwing the interception. I mean, obviously, you can’t say throwing the interception is not a negative play. And the fourth one was a third and six where he rolls out of the pocket, steps up sort of like to the right side of the pocket and had like 25 yards of of open grass in front of him. Oh yeah. And tries I forgot tries to right he tries to rip a throw into I don’t know you had two receivers that were both running like inbreing routes at different levels and the ball bounces at the feet of somebody and there’s a lot of defenders there and it was like just hold on to that ball and run with it. And I think that kind of play, I like that that kind of play happened. Now, obviously, I’d prefer Cam Moore just run with the ball and we don’t have to talk about it. But considering that there seems to have been over the last couple weeks or so a concerted effort by the coaching staff, the new coaching the new interim coaching staff to get Cam to use his legs a little bit more. When a play like that happens, like that’s a perfect teaching moment. I can almost guarantee you what the conversation sounded like in the in the meeting room, in the film room watching that play is they pause it when he’s like cocking to throw. They pause the tape and they’re like, “What are you like? Why why did you not run this one?” This is what we’ve been talking about, Cam. This is the opportunity to use your legs. We don’t need a 15yd completion here. It’s third and six. Go get the first down. And I think that’s good that he has a chance to like really look at that and understand it and learn it. Now, we need to see that applied the next opportunity he has to run the ball or else I’ll start getting more concerned about it. But it’s to me it’s like it’s a perfect teaching tape kind of moment. The miss to Elica manner that you know we’re putting a little bit on both of them. Put more air under the ball but keep running through your break and through your route. Um those are teaching moments and these teaching moments are what you need because at the end of the day the Titans are one and seven. They’re not gonna like this season’s lost. Everything is about developing Cam Ward and the other young players. And so when you have a moment to say like, “Hey, you should have run that ball on third and six and got and tried to pick up the first down and slide safely and protect yourself and all that.” Um, it’s okay to say that that’s just like a teaching moment in a lost season of in a lost game of a lost season and not like overreact more than that and say he sucks. He should have just run the ball. You know what I mean? 100% with you. A lot of these things are minor nitics, right? Mike, I’m going to give you a couple of more numbers here. I’m going to run through rapid fire on these because I don’t think they’re as not as exciting to focus on. But, uh, our pal Zach Lions has done a really good job these last couple days tweeting out some offensive numbers, breaking them up into three portions like the Brian Callahan offense, the Brian Callahan and Bohard Aigree offense, and now the Mike McCoy and Bohard Aigree offense, right? And I mean, he’s he’s split them up between garbage time, non-garbage time. I didn’t have a whole lot of issue with the initial numbers. I think it was Eastston Freeze who responded to him and said, “What about garbage time?” I mean, I’m not kidding. It’s not been garbage time the whole year. Like, they weren’t getting blown out under Brian Callahan. Like, they’re getting blown out every week essentially. I I I don’t feel like you got to make major changes to that chart based on the results because they’re bad every single week. Um, I I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this because I don’t really like Mike McCoy. I mean, I think he’s a antiquated head. I mean, he conservative the punts. Like, hey, credit to him for owning it. Yeah, he regretted the punt that Cam Ward got angry about. Credit to him, but he still made A lot of coaches would go up there decisions in two weeks. He has, and that’s definitely annoying, but a lot of coaches would go up to that podium and be like, “This is our process and we believed in our defense in that moment and blah blah.” They would just spew some nonsense BS that isn’t that they don’t even believe. So, I appreciate that he said, “Looking back, ah, that’s one I should have gone for.” Like, no crap, that’s one he should have gone for, but still. Here are some rapidfire numbers from Zach’s chart that I thought were really notable. The yards per game. Now, I’m going to compare it to the Brian Callahan offense because I think that’s probably most notable. The yards per game from when Callahan was in charge uh as play caller in the first what three weeks or whatever, it’s up from 222 to 298. They’re almost at 300 yards per game under Mike McCoy. Mike McCoy and Bo Hardy. I thought that was notable. This to me is a Cam Ward stat almost exclusively, but still important. Cam Ward’s passer rating under Mike McCoy as an average of 83.9. That’s up 12 a.5 points. It was 71.4 under Brian Callahan. The success rate is up about 5%. It’s at 42.3%. The red zone rate is up significantly, 66.7 from 42.9. And the completion percentage for Cam Ward is up to 65.3%. Compared to sub 55 yards per attempt also significant, 7.1 versus 5.1. Some of this, I think, is a rookie quarterback improving in the middle of the season as opposed to the early, you know, week one, week two struggles when he’s playing some great defenses and he’s making his NFL debut. But I do think the Mike McCoy Bohard Aigree offense has looked more functional than the Brian Callahan one did. Now, uh, it’s got to lead to more points, right? 14 points against the Colts, not enough points in his debut against New England either. So, yes, it’s got to lead to more points, but I do think you’ve seen some, you know, positive progression. I don’t know if you’ve got anything to say, but I can move on. I got a couple little points I want to make. So, um, first of all, the Titans are averaging 13.8 8 points per game, which is last in the league, which is like that’s not just like a bad that’s not just bad. That is pathetic. Like I I would have to go back and look at past seasons, but that feels historically bad. Like I’m going back to 2024 just to see. Yeah, 15.2 was the low in 2024. 2023, 13.9. Okay, so they’re about as bad as the 2023 Panthers and Patriots, who both average 13.9 points per game. Titans averaging 13.8. They’re actually worse than those teams. So like this, it’s just disgusting. And like Cam Ward has shown that growth and that improvement. And the the thesis of this episode is Cam Ward on the right trajectory? Well, he has four straight games of over 222 passing yards. He has three straight games with a passing touchdown. Like he is his first four games, three of his first four games were under 200 yards. They were actually topped out at 175 in three of those first four games. His fourth one there was 219. He hasn’t been under. He hasn’t been that low since that those first four games. 265, 222, 255, 259. Like the production is there. And I talked about this a little on the Sunday show that like no matter what is going on around you, a good quarterback’s going to find a way to produce some statistics that are not at least like they may not be amazing, but they’re not going to be just so bad like they were those first four games. Now, the only concern that I have right now for like Cam Ward going forward is like on that same token, like they find a way to to produce yards. They also find a way to produce points. This is what I mentioned when we were talking about his grade. But the one caveat, and I don’t know if this is an excuse, and I’m curious to hear what you think of this, the Titans don’t possess the ball very much, and their defense can’t get off the field, and their defense gives up long drives, 10-minute drives, 16 play drives. that their defense just cannot get off the field. And when that happens, you as a quarterback have less opportunity to put up stats, to put up yards, and to put up points. And then you have on top of that, your coach is scared to go for it on fourth down at midfield multiple times earlier in this game until it became true desperation time. So, I think as much as like I’d love to see those points be there already, if this team can just possess the ball a little bit more, convert one more third down a game, go for it a couple more times on fourth down, be more aggressive, then I think the points could come. But, the defense is also so bad that I don’t know that that those opportunities will come. So, I’m curious if I’m like if you think I’m just making an excuse there or if that’s a legitimate thing. I don’t have a crazy hot response to it because I feel like it’s pretty straightforward that I neither unit is playing complimentary football. Like the offense takes its fair share of the blame because they’re scoring 13 points. They’re not extending drives, especially earlier in the year. They’re getting in their way with penalties and lots of punting and they they just don’t execute at a high level as a unit and the defense is doing them no favors. I mean, that’s how you’re the worst team in the league. You allow a lot of points and you don’t score many. Like that’s where they are. Both units suck, right? Maybe the defense is even worse because the offense is maybe showing minor signs of life compared to where they were to start the year, but low bar to clear. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like they’re doing great. Uh the last thing Nick Holt said, I’m going to touch on this for 10 seconds because I thought it was straightforward. Uh that was interesting was he praised Shimmer DK quite a bit on Tuesday. Said everything we think he’s getting a lot of opportunities because we moved on from Tyler Lockett. Calvin Ridley is sidelined and it’s been fun to watch him grow in real time. I mean, Chiman Geeki has been really, really good two weeks in a row and he’s got the numbers and production to back it up. So, I absolutely love that. Um, the very last thing I’m going to touch on before we get out of this episode is we did uh a whole Roger McCreary episode yesterday, right? Immediate reaction, so not going to spend a ton of time on it, but when Dinard Wilson was at the podium today, he said something really, really interesting. I don’t think I read too much into it. I tweeted what I my definition of what he said and I think I’m probably bang on. Um, we always say next man up and this might be a slight paraphrase, but but it’s hard not having three players we started the year with at quarterback. To me, that is as close as he’s gonna get to calling out Chad Breaker and Mike Boronzi because no, you can’t control the legious Sneeed injury, but we have it on pretty good account that he was not in favor of the Jarvis Brownley trade, right? Like I mean, and he spoke highly of Jarvis Brownley after the trade. you’d expect him to, but it it’s not hard to figure out that um that’s a GM and president making a decision about a player that they inherited from a previous regime that they no longer wanted here. Whereas Dinard Wilson, remember, he did not inherit Jarvis Brownley. He coached Jarvis Brownley last year. Jarvis Brownley played the most defensive snaps at corner for the team last year and was playing fairly well for them this year. He was not in favor of the Jarvis Brownley trait. That was a decision the GM and president made. Same thing happened on Monday when they traded Roger Mccur. That is not a Dinard Wilson decision. That is a Mike Borgansi and Chad Bricker decision. Now, it doesn’t matter how you feel about those moves. I know almost everyone is not pro- Jarvis Brownley trait. But wherever you land on it, my point is it that doesn’t matter. I’m simply stating the facts. It’s not a Dinardo Wilson decision. It’s a Chad Breaker and Mike Boroni decision. Right. Wait, while we’re on Jarvis Brownley, before you get to your next point, we have to we have to just mention what he said after the Jets game on Sunday. And by the way, uh, for his performance, if you think we’re overhyping it, Benjamin Solak, I used to work with at the Draft Network, mainstream writer for ESPN now, did a whole thread, he’s a mainstream guy. He’s not a Jets guy. He does all 32. Did a whole thread on Jarvis Brownley snaps in coverage against the Bengals. Bracket coverage on Jamar Chase. like just like really good game from Jarvis Brownley on Sunday. After the Jets win that game in the locker room with the reporters, he says, “What time is it?” And they say it’s 4:57. He says, “Good. I still have time to watch the Titans lose.” I mean I mean in a season that’s been littered with embarrassments for the Titans, this is embarrassing. I don’t blame Jarvis Brownley for this. He feels the type of way. He’s entitled to feel the type of way that he feels about the Titans and he takes a well-deserved pot shot at them. I have But co comments like that are also why they traded him. Like it’s funny. Yeah, sure. But you’d prefer your guys not talk like that. Whatever. I mean it’s I’m I’m not I’m not blaming him, but I think that Yeah. I mean, it’s funny we mentioned it. It’s It is what it is. Moving on from it. Go on. I think Dinard Wilson is uh fully Look, this is a guy who knows he’s getting fired at the end of the year. I I said that and I have people in my comments maybe they should keep him. No matter how you feel about Dinard Wilson, and I I don’t dislike Dinard Wilson, they are definitely firing Dinard Wilson. Like whoever the next head coach is going to be is either going to be a defensive-minded guy who’s running the defense or going to be an offensive-minded guy who’s going to have a connection to a different defensive coordinator that he’s going to want to hire. Dinard Wilson knows the situation. They have put him in an impossible task at quarterback. Impossible. By trading Jarvis Brownley and Roger McCurby, they have the worst quarterback room in the NFL. The two starters are waiverwire claims. One of them is playing horribly in Jaylen Armor Davis. The other one, if he’s even healthy, in Daryl Baker, is not playing as well as he played last year. Uh, their nickel corner, I’m not going to get to that yet because they’ve put him in an impossible position from a personnel perspective. I think he took a smart, you can’t say for sure this was a shot at them, but it’s probably a shot at them comment by saying really hard not having the three corners we started the year with. I don’t blame him for it. Um, you know, and and again, you can say that you get what Boroni and Brinker are doing. Like, they’re trading guys for draft picks. They’re not going to care about the coordinator that’s not going to be here next year, right? Like, they’ve got their own interests. I get that, too. But I I feel for Dinard Wilson and the situation that they’ve put him in. I certainly feel for him, too. But, and it’s not just the quarterback position, like he’s been at a talent deficiency all season at the same time. Um, it’s totally what you’re saying like there is there has now become friction between the front office and the coaching staff. And this is something we talked a little bit about on a recent episode, but the coaching staff is trying their hardest to win every single game. Might have been yesterday I talked about this. The coaching staff is trying their hardest to win every single game. Okay. The front office has an eye to the future. To the front office, the rest of the season doesn’t matter wins, losses, like doesn’t you’re one and seven. You’ve already fired the head coach. you’re planning to make wholesale changes across the staff. Obviously, you want to see your players play well, but other than that, nothing really matters to this front office. They have an eye towards the future. They want to develop young guys. What where the coaching staff wants to save their careers. It’s not just about saving their job because they’re not going to save their job. Although, you know, they’ll probably interview with whoever the next head coach is, but um for their next stop, like they want to put good stuff on tape. So, they’re going to keep trying. They’re going to keep trotting Cody Barton out there. they would have kept charting Roger Mccuri out there. Obviously Roger McCur’s obviously Roger McCreary like um he’s one of your better players, but um now they don’t have that option, right? They can’t play Roger Mccur anymore. They need to to somehow get I guess it’s I’m at a catch. It’s a I can’t even talk. I’m just torn because on the one hand I agree with you and I feel for Dinard Wilson who wants to do the best job he can do, but as a fan of the team, I want to see the team do the things they need to do for the future, which is bench the veterans. The the front office and the coaching staff have different interests and they’re on different timelines and uh those two things are butting heads right now. It is what it is. This episode’s probably gone about five, six minutes longer than I planned. So, we’re going to end it with um what happens in that room now because we didn’t talk a whole lot of we talked a little about it, but obviously, you know, Marcus Harris, I I think we’ve got to see Marcus Harris. I hope we see Marcus Harris because it better not be like Samuel Wac instead of Marcus Harris. Although, I think that would be an FU from Dinard Wilson to them if he plays Samuel Wac because I think the front office wants even though they claimed Womac off waiverss, they want to see Marcus Harris because they drafted him. He’s got a profile that might fit Nickel and they want to know if he’s a solution to the Roger McCree problem that they’ve just created. They also, what we did not talk about because it happened afterwards is they claimed a corner off the Green Bay Packers practice squad. Micah Robinson, who um I’m trying to pump the brakes here because like I don’t want to do the Jaylen Armor Davis thing all over again where we were like, “Oh, this is interesting. a bunch of teams tried to claim him and fast forward and we’re like, “Oh my god, he’s the worst corner we’ve ever seen in our lives.” Michael Robinson, where the intrigue lies, and I am intrigued. I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s always falling in love with the mystery box, but uh the Packers drafted him in the seventh round of the draft. He made their 53man roster coming out of camp. They’ve got a really good football team. That interests me. Now, eventually they’ve cut him and put him on the practice squad, which tells me they were probably worried he was going to get claimed and they wanted to keep him like the Titans did with Brandon Krenshaw Dixon kind of thing. But I’m I’m interested that they drafted him and kept him initially. I had uh Packers reporters that I have relationships with dive in my DMs and say this dude played really well in the preseason. You know, we we hate to see him go. Um he ran like a 4-38 I think throughout the pre-draft process. He played at Tain. I’m sure Taj Spears is going to be thrilled to welcome him into the into the room. Um, he’s got small arms. There are some size deficiencies as well, which is really funny because we talked about how they don’t want corners with small arms. Well, beggars can’t always be choosers. They’re dealing with Marcus Harris has short arms, too, by the way. But, exactly. Like both both of them have short arms. But, um, I’m intrigued by this guy and I I kind of hope he gets playing time at some point. I don’t know that he will because it kind of feels like he’s a nickel. Like, Daryl Baker Jr.’s got a concussion. Maybe it’s Marcus Harris outside with this guy in the nickel, but something tells me it’d probably be Samuel Wulmarmac outside with Marcus Harris in the nickel. I mean, if Daryl Baker can’t play, but getting this guy up to speed in like a matter of days with all the communication checks and disguised coverages and everything, but he’s immediately on the 53man roster, right? Because that’s what that’s what you’ve got to do when you take him from a practice squad. So, I’m intrigued by him. I’m more intrigued by Marcus Harris because they drafted him and I really hope he plays is even if he’s terrible. What did I I think I used this term yesterday. We’re in fact finding mode, right? Like you’re in looking for what’s a solution and you need if it’s not a solution that’s okay, but you at least need to know that it’s not a solution. That’s where they’ve reached um with Marcus Harris. So, we’ll see what the corner rotation looks like on Sunday. I think that’s going to do it for this episode of the Music City Audible podcast. We will be back tomorrow. I don’t know for sure what we’re gonna talk about, but you might not agree. And maybe leave a comment if you think this is stupid. I don’t think it’s stupid. The most interesting thing happening to the Titans right now outside of evaluating Cam Ward’s play every week is the coaching search. And yes, is it too early for this? Should we do this next week after the trade deadline? That’s the only thing I’m thinking. And maybe it’s not too early. And I think your uh question to the audience is a great way to solve this. So, let us know in the comments what you’d rather us talk about. And look, what what let me finish because when I say coaching search, what I mean is like this changes every week. It to a degree. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it changes every week in the sense that coordinators are like climbing the coaching ranks, falling down. This guy’s not as good as I thought he was. This guy’s better. Like, I just I’ll be honest, like, Titans football is so disinteresting right now. I I don’t want to do it every week because that would be outrageous. But I don’t think it would be outrageous if every three weeks, every two and a half weeks. We were like, what’s the temperature on the coaching search right now? Like this guy’s on a really impressive run. Do we got to bump him up, bump him down? That’s something that if man, if you think it’s too early, we could do another trade deadline. Uh I don’t know. I mean, we did that. Like you let us know if you hate the coaching idea or if you prefer something else. We will take you seriously and we will strongly consider it. We are definitely going to do an episode tomorrow on Wednesday. We know what Thursdays it’s a preview probably of the Sunday game, but Wednesday is TBD. We’ll be back to talk something related to the Tennessee Titans. You let us know what if coaching trade deadline or a third idea that you like better. If we think it’s a great one, we’ll we’ll roll with it. We will. So, let us know. Until then, y’all stay safe. We’ll see you tomorrow. Tighten up. A Broadway Sports Media production.

Justin Melo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Justin Graver⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are back to talk about the current trajectory Cam Ward is on under the interim coaching staff. We grade Ward’s Week 9 performance, discuss some offensive numbers before and after the head coaching change, and review the new cornerback room after the Roger McCreary trade.

0:00 Cam Ward’s Trajectory
3:51 Grading Cam Ward’s Week 8 Performance
18:33 Offensive Trends
25:26 Titans New Cornerback Room34:49 Wrap Up

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Titans of the South

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