Brian Daboll Reveals the Titans' BIGGEST Problem With Cam Ward
Buck Reising reacts to what Titans OC Brian Daboll had to say about the Offense and QB Cam Ward after two preseason games.
Video Transcript
With all the concern about the Titans offense in two preseason games, we finally got Brian Daboll on the record today to get some analysis of what the offensive coordinator thinks of his quarterback and that unit's performance in the six preseason drives that they've gotten so far.
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So it's the last week of training camp, the last week of the preseason.
The Chicago Bears will be in town on Thursday for a joint practice, and then the final preseason game, the finale at Nissan Stadium against Chicago on Saturday afternoon.
To date, the Titans have played all of their starters that are available to play due to health, and that is the starting offense and the starting defense for minimum three drives per preseason game.
So the offense, the starting offense in, in its entirety, and knock on something, no injuries to date, has gotten six total drives in two preseason games.
But they have been relatively ineffective and certainly have only scored on one of those six drives.
Brian Daboll, Gus Bradley, and Bones Fossil spoke today.
We talked to assistant coaches, position coaches after Tuesday's practice.
And Brian Daboll did not mince words when he talked about the progress or the abilities of what he's seeing right now from his quarterback.
Because of course, the Cam Ward performances, and frankly, the lack of execution, not just on Ward, but on Carnell Tate, on Gunner Helm, on a, a number of different situations that have arisen for the starting offense.
It hasn't been crisp.
It hasn't been clean by any stretch of the imagination.
There's been nothing in these six preseason drives that would convince you that the Titans offense is actually making the kind of progress that you would expect it to make in the second year, ahead of the second year of a number one overall draft pick at quarterback.
So the question becomes, okay, well, for Brian Daboll's purposes, what is he seeing as the Titans offensive coordinator?
Because Daboll, as far as the Titans coaching staff goes, you don't necessarily get Brian Daboll without Robert Saleh, but Brian Daboll is the more important hire of the two.
His abilities to work with quarterbacks across the course of his career, his ability to maximize the quarterback in this particular situation in a year where it absolutely has to be figured out whether Cam Ward is going to be the solution for the foreseeable future, Brian Daboll is more important for the purposes of the Titans trajectory than Robert Saleh is right now.
For the purposes of the offensive coordinator, we don't know how long Daboll is gonna be around because he could have success.
He could get a head coaching job as soon as next year.
He was interviewing for head coaching jobs this year.
He interviewed for this head coaching vacancy before he ultimately took the offensive coordinator job.
It's also possible that Brian Daboll doesn't get another head coaching opportunity and is here for longer than just a season or two to give Cam Ward real, a real shot at growth, at continuity, which is so tough to nail down in the NFL no matter what your situation is, no matter who you are as a quarterback, unless you have a proven commodity in your offensive play calling head coach.
And we know how well that went for the Titans or how poorly that went for the Titans in the one time that they did try it with Brian Callahan.
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So what grade would you give Cam Ward through two preseason games?
Let me know in the comments section.
Leave your comments, and we can, discuss at length together.
Brian Daboll didn't give him a grade.
We didn't ask Brian Daboll to give him a grade necessarily, but this is the way that the Titans offensive coordinator opened up his press conference on Tuesday.
Hey, grinding away, pretty much the last week of training camp coming up, with a practice against our guys today and then get on to Chicago.
We put a lot on these guys in terms of installation.
I think Robert's done a great job of devising the way that he wants to practice, the amount of reps we've got, the amount of times we've been in full pads.
That's been very helpful.
Certainly always trying to improve execution, but happy with where the guys are at.
It's been a competitive training camp.
Still got a long way to go here, but time is short.
You know, we got about twenty days or nineteen days until the first game.
So, you know, keep doing the things we need to do in terms of focusing on today, getting better at the things we can get better at.
And, it's been good.
I've been, been pleased with where the guys are at.
What can be done to kind of work on Cam's downfield accuracy and connecting on more plays, you know, from fifteen, twenty yards or, or longer?
And is that something that with-- in terms of accuracy and throwing the ball, is that, is that something to work on in off-season, or is that something that you can work on even as the season's going?
Yeah, well I, well I think that that's a good question.
You know, those, those fifteen to twenty, twenty-five-yard plays, you know, there's not a lot of teams that just throw the ball thirty-five plus down the field.
I think Seattle was somewhere around the top, and they, they were eight of fifteen last year in the amount of times they did it.
The, the intermediate chunk plays, whether that's, layered throws Man-to-man throws, I mean, that's, that's encompassing everybody.
So it's the receiver, it's incumbent upon the receiver to take proper angles, it's incumbent upon the protection, and then ultimately Cam hitting the plays.
But that's just not on Cam, certainly not on Cam, all of it.
It's a combination of things, and we've been working on it, and we'll continue to work on it.
That's part of the execution stuff that, you know, we're gonna continue to grind away at.
But that's an element of our offense that, that we gotta improve.
Cam said that- So that is Brian Dabell speaking today about Cam Ward specifically, and this is a stat or some stats from Warren Sharp of Sharp Football Analysis.
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So some stats from Warren Sharp on Cam Ward and his 25 dropbacks in three or rather six preseason drives.
He has zero completions longer than seven air yards.
He is 0 of 6, so 0%, on passes of seven air yards.
Last year, Ward ranked dead last in completion rates on passes greater than seven air yards.
He had a 43% completion rate, which ranked him 36 out of 36.
There's no question that Cam Ward has talent, right?
Nobody would dis- nobody would dispute this.
But how much more talented is he than the average NFL starting quarterback?
And you would say, well, he's a number one overall pick.
He absolutely has to be more talented than the average NFL starting quarterback.
But not every number one pick is created equal, and I feel like I'm certain I'm in reruns with this, reminding Titans fans, hey, he's not, he's not what you want him to be just based off the draft pedigree alone.
But that doesn't mean they can't be functional.
His mentality is the thing that you are attaching your hope to the most, right?
Not even the skill set of the player.
He is one of these guys that you wouldn't bet against because of the mental makeup.
Those guys usually succeed no matter the circumstances, even if they have physical limitations.
He's absolutely hungry to be great.
Nobody would dispute this.
But at the end of the day, his execution is still poor, and that needs to show appreciable improvement, not just gradual improvement, because he was slightly better in Sunday night's preseason game from the Thursday night game that they played in Santa Clara.
But it wasn't enough to convince you that this should be definitively your starting quarterback.
This is a player that you should feel good about the trajectory of it.
Six preseason drives does not define his career, does not mean that it will be, you know, that that's all he'll ever be, right?
There's a lot of hyper scrutiny with a very, very small sample size, a very, very small publicly available sample size.
I've got a sample size, me personally, that dates back not just through every training camp practice and every practice in the spring that Cam was out there and available for, but his entire last season, right?
I have the context of Cam Ward's entire career.
I've seen every snap that Cam Ward has taken in practice, in preseason, in regular season, okay?
So I have the entirety of the context.
The only thing that I'm missing, obviously, is being in the meeting rooms with him.
But as far as a front row seat goes, I've got about as much information as I need to be able to determine, okay, these are data points, and the data points to date are concerning.
Does it mean that it's not going anywhere and that it's a, you know, it's a bust or a washout or a failed experiment or all these different things?
No, not yet.
But it's a situation where you see his performance and you simply file it away for later and say, okay, when we get to the games that actually count, is he still having these problems?
When he gets in a game where he can actually be hit, is he still having these problems?
Because that's been the biggest differentiating factor.
They can't simulate Cam Ward getting strip sacked in practice because they can't hit the quarterback, can't bat the ball away, can't swat at his arm when he's being careless with the way that he's running the football, as was evidenced by that backwards fumble that lost six yards, the sack that he took in that game, right?
You can't simulate those things in practice.
The only place that you can replicate it is in preseason before the regular season begins.
So that's not something that they've had to coach him on necessarily because it's not a scenario that's happened in practice.
The value, what little value there is in preseason, is those live bullet reps.
So Brian Dabell, I thought, was pretty strong in his messaging, talking about Cam throughout the course of his press conference, essentially saying, "Yeah, the execution isn't where we need it to be."
And that is not just about Cam, but all things flow through the quarterback, especially in a Brian Dabell-led offense.
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