Are alarms already ringing for Cam Ward in Tennessee?
Yahoo Sports NFL analyst Nate Tice and Yahoo Sports fantasy analyst Matt Harmon discuss how the Titans quarterback struggled in his preseason opener - and why new offensive coordinator Brian Daboll may not have the answers for him. Check out the full conversation on "Football 301" - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Honestly, dude, I, I swear I'm not overreacting to the preseason, performance for this Titans offense, specifically the, with the quarterback the other night, but that was pretty bad.
Stop.
That was- It was that was really bad.
It was really bad.
I was skeptical coming into it.
That did not make me feel, any better about the way things are going to be this year.
I'm, I'm pretty pessimistic about this offense this year.
I'm not the biggest Daboll guy in the world.
I think it's way too spread and shred static, puts way too much on the quarterback, and I think ca- it kind of leans my-- So again, I, maybe I am overreacting to the preseason and people can come back and dunk on me for this, but my concern with pairing up Daboll and Cam Ward is that it can, essentially be, like I, I do think it lea- to me, I think it leans into too much of like the worst parts of Cam Ward, which is- Yeah too aggressive, get in the gun, like, and, and just kind of s- push the ball vertically down the field, where I think he, based on who he was last year when he was statistically the, you know, we've talked about this, there's no good stat.
Like, the there, there, there's no good stat.
He's one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL last year from a statistical perspective.
I think that just leans into his worst instincts overall and doesn't really give him kind of like the layups that I thought he needed last year.
I don't really think this offense- Yeah kind of, allows for that.
This is an offense I'm, I'm, I'm concerned about coming into the season, that's for sure.
That's the part of everything you just said.
It's-- I, we talked about second-year quarterbacks, we talked about Cam Ward, and then, and we, that's kind of been our talking point.
It's like, hey, there's no stat I can point at that I'm like, "Yeah, just trust this, this is gonna work out."
Like Drake May after his fir- rookie year, success rate was great.
Like, you know, other thing, I was like, okay, Trevor Lawrence, his rookie year, I was like, okay, he throws over the middle.
It was low sack rate.
We can cook with this.
Cam Ward, it's like bad sack rate, bad on third down, bad early downs, bad on this, and the offense again didn't do much or do much help.
But this offseason, I was like, hey, it's just gonna be a little bit more sound.
It's gonna be a little bit more solidified around him.
They hired Daboll, and I'm like, all right, at least Daboll always has put some stuff together.
But he's been, I'll be honest, one of my kind of least favorite or at least in the bottom half- Yeah play callers for me.
I just think his stuff is there's some static-ness.
There's stuff of like, oh, we saw that last week, we're gonna use this week.
There's a lot of like, all right, we're playing against this type of defense this week.
Oh, these are the, the, these are the hits that work as opposed to a new idea.
Mm-hmm.
They just kind of use always the staples, which again is like, it's hard-- I'm talking about both sides of my mouth.
It's good you have the staples, but modern NFL is dressing up those staples.
And again, it's week one of preseason, but some alarm bells are ringing because the run game, the understanding of run game had some moments, but the shotgun run game and the shotgun pass game, the shotgun stuff was, that's what scares me.
Very spread.
Maybe they're hiding some stuff, but they looked a lot like the- Yeah Giants offenses, under Daboll.
Right.
And a lot of It, it did.
That's what's scaring me is that then the RPOs they called were the bubble, and then the glance route from the X receiver, Carnell Tate.
So they're running this, that's the most staple RPO that teams run from high school onwards.
It worked great a few years ago.
Josh Allen was able to hit a bunch.
Daniel Jones in his good year, that's what they lived in.
He threw a bunch of those glance routes.
Defense has caught up, and even defenses like the 49ers who aren't running a lot of crazy stuff, they were like, "Okay," like, "I know how to play this."
And that's what scares me.
That just keeps scaring me, is like, does Daboll have any new ideas
