The Cam Ward Stat That Must Change for the Titans in 2026
Buck Reising finds a stat relating to Titans QB Cam Ward from his Rookie season that must change for Tennessee in 2026.
Video Transcript
There are several Cam Ward statistics that need to change in 2026 for the Tennessee Titans to be a more successful football team, but one in particular stands out that's a problem for the Titans quarterback and arguably the biggest correction that he will need to make heading into this upcoming season, his sophomore season.
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So there's one Cam Ward statistic above all others that is really, really tough to come to terms with, and that is the number of sacks that Cam Ward took in his rookie season.
His first year in the NFL, he was the most sacked quarterback in football.
Fifty-five sacks is the total.
Now, we also understand that Cam Ward is not exclusively responsible for all of these sacks because we do not have access to everything that's supposed to happen on every given play.
We don't know if the receiver runs a wrong route and Cam is holding the ball expecting, expecting the receiver to be in one place, the receiver's in another, takes a sack.
We don't know if the offensive line situation, what the protections are.
Is the offensive line res- responsible for that sack, or is Cam Ward?
But what we all know and understand is that this man cannot take fifty-five sacks in any way, shape, or form in 2026 if the Titans are to improve.
They're a killer.
For those of you who are watching the quarterback series on Netflix, I've heard described the sequence in Denver, the red zone situation where Cam Ward is essentially bullying Brian Callahan into picking the kind of play that Cam Ward wants to run in the red zone, and Cam Ward is talking on the sidelines, from what I have heard, what I have seen on social media clips, talking on the sidelines, "Can't take a sack, can't take a sack, can't take a sack."
Cam takes a sack.
He has been honest and transparent about taking about half of those sacks and putting them on his shoulders, his responsibility, his failures, and not just saying, "Yeah, fifty-five sacks, the offensive line needs to be better."
Of course, that's not accurate, and it's not true.
So Cam Ward's sack statistics have to decrease by a substantial margin because I think that if you talked about any other quarterback I think Cam-- I think it's the biggest place that Cam gets a pass if in, in all honesty, and that is a Two Rivers Ford take, question tonight.
What-- Where do you think Cam Ward gets the biggest pass from Titans fans?
You can say that it's fair, you can say that it's an unfair pass, but this is the place that I think he gets a little bit of an unfair pass.
If Bo Nix, for example, were to take fifty-five sacks in a season, Bo Nix would be crucified.
If this were to happen to another player with a-- at, at a team that is higher profile a team Well, CJ Stroud, if CJ Stroud took fifty-five sacks in a season, he would be crucified, right?
Younger quarterbacks who understand that they have to get the ball out quickly, understand that the defensive line in the NFL is as athletic as it's ever been and only getting better year over year, understanding that the athletes, the five athletes in front of them on the offensive line, are always going to be, almost always going to be inferior athletes to the guys that are trying to get to the quarterback.
So you see the sack stat- sack statistics, easy for me to say, and you look around at oth- some of the other situations in the league, you say, "Okay, well, Caleb Williams took sixty..." What was it, sixty-six, sixty-eight?
I have the number in front of me somewhere.
An inordinate, inordinate amount of sacks year over year, and he ended up being one of the biggest revelations of the 2025 NFL season.
Yes, so here's sixty-eight to twenty-four is what he reduced his sack total.
Sixty-eight his rookie year to twenty-four year over year.
He has thrown thirteen interceptions on one hundred one thousand one hundred and thirty career passing attempts, described as an excellent clip, and his play-making is believed to be sustainable, right?
We talked about the top ten quarterback list, where Cam needs to rank in next year's list.
But the only way, one of the biggest ways to not accomplish that goal, to not make the kind of progress that you need to make, is for Cam to continue to take as many sacks.
Now, the thing that stands out about that specific situation is Cam takes so many sacks because he is trying to find big play opportunities, a thing that he was renowned for as a college football player, a thing that he did several times in the NFL that were the, the few and far between wow moments that Cam Ward would offer you.
But what he has to have a better understanding of in 2026 is his own athletic limitations relative to the competition that he's facing, understanding that he's not running away from these dudes, that he is as susceptible to getting got as just about any other quarterback in the league.
Now, he does have some of that wiggle.
He can put a shoulder down every once in a while.
He's not a super willing runner, and that's something that, I saw talked about incorrectly, talking about the run rate, around Cam Ward last year, quarterback run rate around Cam Ward last year, and how he clearly wasn't being coached on running the football, to which I And that was analysis provided by Ben Solak, and it's, it Listen, there are few and far between moments where, I'm gonna look at Ben Solak's work and say, "No, that's incorrect," but this is factually incorrect.
Cam Ward was coached on running the ball more as an NFL player, as an NFL rookie.
He just was loathe to do it.
He's stubborn.
He likes to do things the way that he likes to do it.
He wants to win from the pocket primarily, and the ground game is something that he has a little bit of, but it's not an overwhelming part of his game, and it's not an overwhelming Not an overwhelming advantage, unless you understand how much more often offenses are able to sustain drives when the quarterback is somebody that has to be defended as a threat to run the football.
On any NFL defense, they will tell you that having to defend all 11 makes life infinitely more difficult.
So even if Cam's running abilities are incremental and not, you know, Lamar Jackson-esque, B- Josh Allen-esque, Drake May-esque, that's fine, but he That's a thing that he has to work on, along with knowing when the ride is over, knowing when the journey is over, and throwing the ball away.
55 sacks is unacceptable.
68 for Caleb Williams, I don't know how he didn't break in half, but the drop from 68 to 24, that's as telling a stat about the upcoming season, or that will be as telling a stat about the upcoming season, whether it was succe- success or a failure, as we will have.
And that's the biggest issue with the Titans, right?
You have no idea what Caleb Williams benefited from, beyond just, you know, taking less sacks and being more efficient and understanding when to get rid of the ball in, in a hurry and when to throw away the ball and, and, and how to live another down and all these different things.
Caleb Williams got a significant offensive line upgrade from his rookie year to his sophomore campaign, in which it's They, they were the comeback Bears, the cardiac Bears, right?
They were winning in ridiculous fashion all the way through the regular season.
They did so in the playoffs as well, especially against the Green Bay Packers, where they were a rocket ship and, you know, had some things to shore up and, and fell short against a better team in the postseason this year.
But still, the Bears invested in their offensive line after Caleb Williams' rookie season.
The Titans investment in the offensive line are a fifth-round pick in Fernando Camerono, a sixth-round pick in Pat Coogan, a, a number of different journeyman type of players in Austin Schlottmann or Cordell Volsen or Andre James, and basically status quo on an offensive line unit that wasn't totally responsible for 55 sacks, but was more responsible than not.
That was not a professional offensive line unit.
So as I look at this situation and say, "Okay, can Cam Ward do the Caleb Williams thing?"
If, if they were in a vacuum on the exact same team, I do think that Cam Ward If Cam Ward was on the Bears, could he do the Caleb Williams stuff?
I think so.
The Titans offensive line situation is probably is gonna be the thing that I think we spent the most time talking about as a detrimental portion of the roster where so many other pieces of the roster have been upgraded.
Maybe they'll be, You know, the bar is set so low, maybe the bar is set so low that just any level of achievement will be viewed as a success for a patchwork unit, but if you're talking about the biggest glaring hole on the roster and one of the biggest things that made a difference for Caleb Williams from rookie to sophomore year, that's the investment in the offensive line, and that investment in the offensive line for Cam Ward does not currently exist.
Although, of course, they would've liked to have done more.
Nobody's disputing that.
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