The ball comes out of Cam Ward’s hand so quick.
Alarmingly quick. Disconcertingly quick. But in a compact way. More like it’s being launched from a catapult than from a trebuchet. Sometimes quarterbacks with quick releases get compared to MLB shortstops. Ward somehow feels more like a second baseman. He doesn’t look like he’s gearing up to throw particularly far, even when he is. He just flicks the ball out of his hand from a lower-than-you’d-think release point and it sizzles toward its target.
Watching Ward at a Tennessee Titans OTA practice is a little surreal, especially when he’s throwing next to the likes of Will Levis, Brandon Allen and Tim Boyle. Levis still looks and plays like he’s auditioning for Captain America; it’s all power and effort. Allen, in a lot of ways, is the trebuchet to Ward’s catapult, deliberate and methodical. Boyle’s all knees and elbows, lanky in the kind of way that a middle-inning reliever or young power forward who hasn’t grown into his frame yet is.
Then there’s Ward. Unlike Boyle, he’s as compact as they come. Unlike Allen, he’s lightning-quick. And unlike Levis, everything he does seems effortless.
The real question, of course, is if different means better.
Despite the ballyhoo about the Titans evenly dividing practice reps and not immediately installing Ward with the first-string players in this phase of offseason workouts, Ward threw more than any of his counterparts in 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 drills during practice on May 28.
In 7-on-7’s, Ward took 10 of the 20 reps. In full team workouts, he dropped back six times compared to four from his teammates.
Cam Ward stats: Analyzing Titans practice performance
The numbers won’t wow anyone, especially because no one’s wearing full pads. Ward completed eight of his 10 tries in 7-on-7’s. When rushers and linemen were introduced, he struggled a little. He fumbled an under-center exchange, had one pass dropped, had another broken up and would’ve been sacked or forced to scramble twice.
But the throws themselves told a fuller story. Ward’s not shy.
“Experience is the greatest teaching tool we have,” offensive coordinator Nick Holz said “You want him to test it. He had one (in the first OTA practice on Tuesday, May 27) where he tried to fit a ball into a real tight window, and I’m sure in college that ball was open and got completed.
“(Tuesday) that ball was a different result. He goes, ‘Well, I used to do this or that.’ And he sits in the meetings and sees the speed of the game and how quick those windows are and the differences. Then there’s other ones he does fit in.”
Ward’s first throw in 7-on-7’s was a rocket completed to tight end Gunnar Helm through a tight window with two or three defenders within arm’s reach. He feathered a few other balls into contested coverage, unafraid to give his receivers chances at jump balls or in narrow corridors along the sideline.
On one play against a full defense, Ward rolled to his right and bought time, finding a tiny hole in the coverage he could direct receiver Jha’Quan Jackson toward. Ward slowed his process and pointed Jackson to the opening, then made the usually unwise decision to throw across his body back into the middle of the field, pinpointing the ball into Jackson’s chest, but the second-year receiver dropped the pass.
“Going against air, it’s all BS. It’s not real football,” Ward said. “Any time I get a chance to go against a real defense, especially one like ours, it’s a blessing. You finally get to see real game speed, what it’s going to be like. You see a lot of people’s character when the bullets start flying.”
Ward’s character is one undeterred by risk. In that way, the narrative isn’t too different than the one Levis spent all of 2024 trying to overwrite. The first offseason of the Brian Callahan era was all about trying to get Levis to check the ball down, and it worked. Levis dumped a bunch of passes off to running backs in OTAs and minicamp and training camp, then still turned the ball over at a league-leading rate.
Now, while Levis is still throwing dump-offs and hitch routes in 7-on-7’s in Year 2 under Callahan’s tutelage, Ward didn’t target a running back a single time and looked at a back’s direction only once in full-team activity.
That behavior got Levis admonished while he was at Kentucky and throughout his Titans tenure. The question is whether Ward can get away with it to the degree his predecessor couldn’t.
“Today was better than yesterday,” Holz said with a smile, knowing Ward has practiced against a live defense just twice. “One day in, we’ll take that progress.”Â
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.