Let’s start with the basics of the Titans’ 2025 season: Cam Ward is a dawg and brings a new and desperately needed energy to a fledgling franchise that hasn’t had a personality for years.
Ward practically dared the Titans not to use the first overall pick in the 2025 draft to make him the face of their faceless franchise. Ward has wasted no words since he was taken at No. 1 overall in describing the work it would take to turn the Titans into a real NFL team. Ward’s offseason plan was as follows: “Just work out, stay in the playbook and throw the f— out of the ball.” Simple enough.
Ward has been clear with Titans beat writers about being unaccustomed to losing. He doesn’t plan to start now, and often uses colorful language to hammer home his point. The first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft doesn’t intend to play Titans football, because Titans football stinks.
2024 Tennessee Titans (Ranks)
Points per game: 18.2 (27th)
Total yards per game: 304.2 (26th)
Plays per game: 60.7 (23rd)
Dropbacks per game: 33.3 (24th)
Dropback EPA per play: -0.056 (27th)
Rush attempts per game: 26.5 (18th)
Rush EPA per play: -0.175 (29th)
Can Cam Ward Revive A Listless Franchise?
Ward will bring Mahomesian traits into his rookie season: The scrambling, the sixth sense amid pressure, the awareness of everyone’s location on the field at any given moment, the ability to make off-platform throws into tight windows. Ward showed during his time at Miami that he’s unafraid to make risky throws, that he’s ultra-confident in his abilities, and he’s not going to change his game for anyone. Ward brings an edge to an otherwise edgeless football team.
That includes Brian Callahan, entering his second and likely final year as the team’s head coach. Callahan has talked this offseason and reigning in Ward and creating an offense predicated on safe, EPA-friendly throws. That’s not happening. Callahan might think it’s happening, but it’s not. Thankfully for the Titans and their down-bad fans, Ward is not going to play that game.
Passing game
QB: Cam Ward, Brandon Allen
WR: Calvin Ridley, Chimere Dike
WR: Tyler Lockett, Van Jefferson
WR: Elic Ayomanor, Treylon Burks
TE: Chig Okonkwo, Josh Whyle
Ward is really into Calvin Ridley, who last season led the NFL in air yards. While you can’t feed your family with air yards, they are a decent indication of a player’s opportunity and usage. It would hardly be shocking if Ridley led the league against in air yards in 2025. This time, however, it counts.
The Titans placed Ridley’s locker directly next to Ward’s locker. The two have reportedly been inseparable over the past couple months, discussing route concepts, coverages, and taking extra reps together during Titans OTAs. Ward has dubbed Ridley a “dawg” and a top-five NFL wideout. It’s abundantly clear that Ward understands his success in 2025 hinges largely on Ridley as his primary weapon.
It should be a good fit. Only three college quarterbacks in 2024 had more deep ball completions than Ward, who was graded by Pro Football Focus as last season’s fourth best downfield passer. Ward represents a stunning upgrade for Ridley over the likes of Will Levis and Mason Rudolph, two of 2024’s worst downfield throwers. Ridley makes for an excellent mid-round option for fantasy drafters who largely fade the wideout position in the early rounds. Having Ridley as your WR3 this season will feel almost criminal. Don’t dismiss the veteran because he didn’t convert his precious air yards in 2024.
Lockett’s peripherals have fallen off a cliff, as you might expect for a wideout entering his age-33 season. Lockett ended the 2024 season as the Seahawks’ third or fourth pass catching option, mostly running wind sprints down the sidelines and rarely seeing downfield looks from Geno Smith. Lockett last year in Seattle caught five of his 12 downfield targets for 150 yards and a touchdown. He ranked 48th out of 116 wideouts in ESPN’s open score, which measures a pass catchers’ ability to separate from defenders. Lockett could have some sneaky — if volatile — value in a Tennesee offense without a lot of target competition. Even so, he should be considered a deep league option.
Ayomanor, taken with the 186th pick in the 2025 draft, had a hefty 14.3 average depth of target in college and is considered a solid contested catch specialist who uses his body well on deep shots into coverage. Callahan and other Tennessee coaches spoke highly of Ayomanor during the team’s rookie minicamp. He’s set to take on an immediate starting role after Treylon Burks sustained a broken collar bone during Titans training camp, potentially costing him a chunk of the 2025 season and creating a path for Ayomanor to seize a spot in three-wideout sets. Ayomanor will be a high-variance weekly option who should be left on waiver wires in 10 and 12-team leagues.
Okonkwo last season was useless for fantasy purposes while Will Levis was under center for Tennessee. With Mason Rudolph, from Week 14-17 — a tiny sample, I know — Okonko was third in tight end receptions and fifth in tight end targets. With Rudolph dropping back, Okonkwo saw a target on 27 percent of his pass routes as the Titans’ primary check-down option. That’s a noteworthy rate, to put it as mildly as possible. Over his three-year NFL career, Okonkwo has commanded a target on a solid-if-unspectacular 20 percent of his routes. A solid route participation rate in 2025 should make Okonkwo a good-enough fantasy option in 12-team formats. He’s a fine target for drafters who wait until the final rounds to snag a tight end.
Titans have special Ward-Ridley connection cooking
Mike Florio and Chris Simms stress the importance of QBs having the right mentality and being able to brush off mistakes, as well as how a tight connection with a WR like Calvin Ridley could be a game changer.
Running Game
RB: Tony Pollard, Tyjae Spears, Kalel Mullings
OL (L-R): Dan Moore, Peter Skoronski, Lloyd Cushenberry, Kevin Zeitler, JC Latham
Tony Pollard eventually emerged last season as Tennessee’s lead back after sharing the role with Tyjae Spears for much of the season’s first month and a half. Spears sustained multiple brain injuries in 2024 and dealt with undisclosed personal and professional issues that have been vaguely referenced by Callahan and other Titans coaches this offseason. Callahan, for his part, has said Spears — entering his third NFL season after averaging 2.8 catches per game in his first two years — has had an “unbelievable offseason.”
“One of the things about Tyjae (Spears) is I heard a lot about Tyjae when I got here, about the type of person and the player that he was,” Callahan said. “And we’ve had conversations, but he did have a challenging year, both personally and professionally and there was some things that we’ve had to sit and visit about on different occasions. I give a lot of credit to him because he’s had an unbelievable offseason in terms of his energy, his effort, his clarity and what he wants to get done.”
Back in the coaches’ good graces, perhaps Spears has an outside shot at grabbing lead back duties in 2025 from the fine-but-unspectacular Pollard, who in 2024 was 61st out of 81 qualifying rushers in EPA per carry, in the range of Miles Sanders and Antonio Gibson. There’s always a chance neither Spears nor Pollard takes control of the Tennessee backfield. That would leave both guys as borderline RB3 options in 12-team formats. Their fantasy value would spike if the other back missed time in 2025, just as we saw Pollard average a whopping 22 carries in games Spears missed in 2024.
Pollard’s rushing metrics mostly got back to form in 2024. Finally recovered from the broken leg he suffered at the end of the 2022 season, Pollard ranked ninth in rush yards after contact per carry, higher than notable names like Jahmyr Gibbs and James Cook. After having almost no explosiveness in his disappointing 2023 campaign, Pollard racked up 30 rushes of more than ten yards last season; only seven running backs had more.
Pollard and Spears last season ran behind one of the NFL’s worst offensive lines. Only the Jaguars and Patriots created fewer yards before contact, a metric that shows how much space an o-line is creating for its rushers. Hopefully the team’s offseason moves will create a slightly friendlier rushing environment for the Titans backs.
Tennessee Titans 2025 Win Total
DraftKings over/under: 5.5 wins
I’ll take the over here based mostly on Cam Ward’s extraordinary dawg levels and his ability to make a play when things are falling apart. That’s something the Titans have sorely missed, especially during the short-lived Will Levis era. Levis, of course, could turn a well-designed play into a pick-six better than anyone in recent NFL history.
The Titans whiffed on Levis, who was a bad QB at every level of football during his entire life and probably shouldn’t have been drafted at all, much less in the second round. I don’t think they’ll miss on Ward, who can at least make them respectable while they wait to transition from the crushingly mediocre Callahan.
