Cam Ward is more concerned about his feet than his right shoulder. That is the good news.
The Tennessee Titans quarterback played every snap on offense before he sustained an injury to his throwing shoulder on a 7-yard touchdown run that capped the Titans’ opening drive of Sunday’s season-ending 41-7 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Reports are that the injury is not so severe as to require surgery. That means Ward, the first overall selection in the 2025 NFL Draft, will have nearly a full offseason to train and improve certain aspects of his game.
“There is relief for myself, for the building,” Ward said Monday. “And the training staff, they are going to get it right. Continue to walk me through the process [of] what I need to do to get better and get back on the field.”
Even with the injury, Ward was one of five NFL rookies — and the only one who was not an offensive lineman — to play more than 95 percent of his team’s snaps of offense. Only two other rookie quarterbacks played more than half of the available snaps.
A rundown of the rookie quarterbacks who played the most on offense during the 2025 NFL season:
Player
Team
Games
Starts
Snaps
Pct.
Cam Ward
Tennessee
17
17
1,007
95.4
Jaxson Dart
N.Y. Giants
14
12
774
67.3
Tyler Shough
New Orleans
11
9
605
53.8
Shedeur Sanders
Cleveland
8
7
428
39.5
Dillon Gabriel
Cleveland
10
6
372
34.3
That workload provided Ward with valuable experience and made clear areas of his game that need improvement.
For example, among qualifying leaders, he was one of two quarterbacks who completed fewer than 60 percent of his passes. In Ward’s case, it was just below 60 percent at 59.8.
In terms of the advanced metric net yards over average (NYoA), which measures a player’s performance relative to all others based on how he performed in specific situations, Ward was last at -1,018.37, which was the second-worst figure among quarterbacks over the last 10 years. This season’s second-worst passing NYoA was Las Vegas quarterback Geno Smith’s -567.24.
The root of the problem, as Ward sees it, is his base. That is to say, how he sets his feet and uses his lower half to deliver the ball.
“I’m working on my base on my mechanics,” he said. “… So, the timetable for what I have set to get to mechanically what I need to do is still on schedule.”
The former University of Miami standout added that he plans to watch a lot of film during the offseason, particularly of defenses that he did not face this just-concluded 3-14 campaign.
The one thing Ward will try to replicate throughout his career, though, is his ability to stay on the field.
“You got to stay healthy for your teammates,” he said. “If I’m not playing a lot of games, then the majority of the time we’re not going to be in a lot of games. So I just try to take my health as seriously as I can.”