Cam Ward is more concerned about his feet than his right shoulder. That is the good news.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 opening drive of Sunday\u2019s season-ending 41-7 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is relief for myself, for the building,\u201d Ward said Monday. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even with the injury, Ward was one of five NFL rookies \u2014 and the only one who was not an offensive lineman \u2014 to play more than 95 percent of his team\u2019s snaps of offense. Only two other rookie quarterbacks played more than half of the available snaps.<\/p>\n
A rundown of the rookie quarterbacks who played the most on offense during the 2025 NFL season:<\/p>\n
Player<\/p>\n
Team<\/p>\n
Games<\/p>\n
Starts<\/p>\n
Snaps<\/p>\n
Pct.<\/p>\n
Cam Ward<\/p>\n
Tennessee<\/p>\n
17<\/p>\n
17<\/p>\n
1,007<\/p>\n
95.4<\/p>\n
Jaxson Dart<\/p>\n
N.Y. Giants<\/p>\n
14<\/p>\n
12<\/p>\n
774<\/p>\n
67.3<\/p>\n
Tyler Shough<\/p>\n
New Orleans<\/p>\n
11<\/p>\n
9<\/p>\n
605<\/p>\n
53.8<\/p>\n
Shedeur Sanders<\/p>\n
Cleveland<\/p>\n
8<\/p>\n
7<\/p>\n
428<\/p>\n
39.5<\/p>\n
Dillon Gabriel<\/p>\n
Cleveland<\/p>\n
10<\/p>\n
6<\/p>\n
372<\/p>\n
34.3<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
That workload provided Ward with valuable experience and made clear areas of his game that need improvement.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
In terms of the advanced metric net yards over average (NYoA), which measures a player\u2019s 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\u2019s second-worst passing NYoA was Las Vegas quarterback Geno Smith\u2019s -567.24.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m working on my base on my mechanics,\u201d he said. \u201c… So, the timetable for what I have set to get to mechanically what I need to do is still on schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The one thing Ward will try to replicate throughout his career, though, is his ability to stay on the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got to stay healthy for your teammates,\u201d he said. \u201cIf 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cam Ward is more concerned about his feet than his right shoulder. That is the good news. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2061],"tags":[127,7,6,526,394,2411,527],"class_list":{"0":"post-662030","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennessee-titans","8":"tag-cam-ward","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-tennessee","12":"tag-tennessee-titans","13":"tag-tennesseetitans","14":"tag-titans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115855778652233545","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}