Why Cam Ward won't get the same treatment as Marcus Mariota or Ryan Tannehill as Titans QBs

Buck Reising explains why there should be no excuses for Titans QB Cam Ward heading into the 2026 season

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Video Transcript

No excuses.

That's the theme of tonight's video regarding Titans quarterback Cam Ward, and why his treatment as the potential future of the franchise will be different than his predecessors in Ryan Tannehill and Marcus Mariota.

That is the topic of discussion that we are looking forward to diving into here with you.

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So what is the difference between Cam Ward, Ryan Tannehill, Marcus Mariota, and for the sake of conversation, Malik Willis and Will Levis?

We will work through that problem tonight, or that topic tonight, and discuss if there is something that we can differentiate between the four of those players, I guess the five of those players, and how they will be treated as far as the way that they are covered.

There's a number of different things that are different about each player.

One, they're obviously all five dif- different players.

And for the purposes of this conversation, I think we can eliminate Malik Willis as a part of, as a part of it because Malik was never viewed here as a franchise type of player.

He was viewed as a developmental prospect, as a third-round pick in the 2022 draft.

He's obviously gone on since they flipped him for a seventh-round pick to Green Bay to have great success with Green Bay and get a substantive payday, not a franchise quarterback type of payday, but a decent payday, north of $20 million average annual value from the Miami Dolphins this year, who are in an interesting circumstance, and view Malik Willis, it seems, as a bridge from where they are where they have been, which is non-competitive, to where they are trying to be, which is to rebuild their franchise.

So we'll remove Malik from the purposes of this conversation.

Marcus Mariota was a number two overall pick in the NFL draft.

Marcus was viewed as a potential franchise quarterback.

Ryan Tannehill, many people, many Titans fans would not classify Tannehill as a franchise quarterback, which is odd because they had the most success under Ryan Tannehill in the modern era, and he is the most statistically accomplished quarterback, in fact, more statistically accomplished than Steve McNair.

He is the second-best Titans quarterback to play for this franchise in the Titans era, so since 1999, since Air McNair, and that is a pretty big gap between McNair and his end with the Titans to Ryan Tannehill taking the reins halfway through 2019.

Ryan Tannehill was, for a period of time, the Titans franchise guy.

Then you get to Will Levis, who they tried to make a franchise guy, but was always closer to Malik Willis than he was to the other three for the purposes of this conversation.

Malik Willis was a third-round pick.

Will Levis was a second-round pick.

A second-round pick is not an outright flyer on a quarterback the way that Malik Willis was, or at least was viewed, but Levis more fits that category.

Now, they saw enough where they felt like they should try and build around him, where they felt they could maximize his abilities with more talent on the roster, find a cost-effective option at quarterback.

If it worked out, great.

They look smart as hell.

If it blows up in their face, well, they were gonna have to reset the board to zero anyway.

They were just trying to stave that off for a period of time.

Will Levis obviously cratered and went, I believe, one and 10 in his first full-time season as a starter.

He was benched in the middle of that, missed some time due to injury in the middle of that, but ultimately was wholly ineffectual, and is viewed here as a bit of a pariah, not by his teammates, a little by the organization, and certainly by the fan base.

Will Levis was somebody they wanted to be a franchise guy, but just cratered in absolutely every way humanly possible.

So that leaves us then Mariota, Ryan Tannehill, and the 2025 number one overall pick in Cameron Ward.

So Cam comes in here, and he is viewed as somebody who is a good enough prospect in his year's draft class to be the number one overall pick relative to what's around him.

Now, you can put all those qualifiers around him if you want, but he was the number one overall pick in his draft class, and he will carry that label for his entire career, boom or bust.

So Cam Ward is the next potential franchise quarterback for this organization.

And you look now at Mariota, and you look now at Tannehill, who would be the only other two players in this, in the last couple of years.

You could go all the way back to Locker if you wanted to, but I don't think Locker, really, really deserves a, a, a seat at this table as far as just how quickly it, it ended, why it ended, and, and all the things that went wrong, ultimately to his professional demise.

Obviously, Jake Locker is not, has not met his demise, but is still, far, far removed from playing football and certainly far removed from the Tennessee Titans organization.

There is no real presence of Jake Locker, no, Jake Locker is not somebody who comes back for alumni day.

I'm sure he has good connections, good relationships with his teammates, from those years, but there is no sign, no scent of Jake Locker anywhere around this organization other than he was a former first-round pick by the team.

So Cam, Mariota, and Tannehill.

The mistake that was made and the thing that will be different, most different with Ward versus the other two The other two were given benefit of the doubt far past the point of its expiration.

Marcus Mariota was a number two overall pick whose body ultimately failed him, but was given every opportunity, every turn, and should have been, by the way, to become this team's franchise quarterback.

He was not able to secure the job in twenty nineteen.

Tannehill replaced him.

We understand the injury history that goes along with Mariota, and that was the biggest part of his downfall.

So then you look at Tannehill, who took his place in nineteen in that week six Broncos game and then went on to lead the Titans to one of the most successful consecutive runs that this franchise has had in its history in almost thirty years of being the Tennessee Titans since moving from Houston as the Oilers.

Tannehill was excellent for a period of time.

Nineteen, he didn't need to be the thing that facilitated them.

In twenty, he was absolutely a huge part of facilitating the most successful offense in the Titans era.

Derrick Henry obviously had two thousand yards that season, but both fed off one another's abilities, and both were able to maximize their abilities due to the presence of each other on the roster.

Tannehill and Mariota, excuses were made for them far past the point of expiration.

What I mean by that is people were still trying to manifest, myself included, Marcus Mariota still having an opportunity, still having a chance to secure that franchise quarterback label.

It went on for far too long, probably, and, and they could have made that determination, that switch at the start of the twenty nineteen season, and I don't know if it impacts their, their potential, meeting with Patrick Mahomes in the AFC Championship game where Mahomes would go on to win his first Super Bowl, but it certainly impacts the start of that season in which they were two and six, two and four, if I remember correctly.

Two and four sounds right.

Two and six sounds a bit extreme.

So let's say, let's say two and four, if memory serves, at the start of that twenty nineteen season.

Mariota, excuses were made for him because he was a likable guy, because he still had flashes, but they were few and far between after his body started to break down.

Tannehill was never flashy, right?

But Tannehill was extremely efficient, was extremely effective, understood how to maximize the skill set of his teammates and be more of a facilitator than he was an outright driver of that situation.

We understood that Derrick Henry was the driving force of that team and that Tannehill was there as a supplementary option, but Tannehill was as good a supplementary option as existed in the NFL.

It's okay if you're Robin as long as you have Batman.

Batman was Derrick Henry in that particular situation.

And then when Derrick Henry dealt with injury, Ryan Tannehill was still able to shoulder a huge burden in that twenty twenty-one season and find ways to make the Tennessee Titans the number one overall seed in that year's postseason in the AFC.

And of course, we understand how that cratered.

You could have cut bait Well, you couldn't have financially, but you could have made the argument that they should have moved on, and they did try, right?

They drafted Will Levis.

They drafted Malik Willis the year prior to that.

And so you saw a number of different things.

The, the organization was laying the groundwork to move on.

But out of necessity almost, Ryan Tannehill was left in there far past the point of his expiration date and ultimately led to, more harsh feelings around Tannehill.

It seems, maybe that's recency bias, but it seems more harsh feelings around Tannehill than there were positive feelings for all the good work that he did, even if he did not get them past the mountaintop, right?

The mountaintop being the AFC Championship game into the Super Bowl in that twenty nineteen season.

And of course, being the biggest reason that they were not able to secure home field advantage.

Well, they did secure home field advantage.

He did that.

He helped them a great deal, but was the reason that they nuked their home field advantage with three interceptions in that playoff game, the divisional round against Cincinnati.

With Ward, it will be diff-- And you hate to predetermine these things, but it's okay to predetermine them, to predetermine them if, if the shoe fits, for lack of a better term.

What Ward has that the other two don't is the distinguishing factor of being the number one overall pick in his draft.

Mariota was second, so you could say, "Well, Marcus is right there," but there's a difference between being the number one overall pick at quarterback and even being the second selection at quarterback.

Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson, right?

That can go sideways very, very quickly.

Cam Ward will not get the same kind of grace that Ryan Tannehill or Marcus Mariota did, and that's not because he's a bad person.

That's not because, we're out to get him.

That's not because of any number of reasons that you might manufacture in your head to say, "Well, why are you treating him differently than you would treat any of these others?"

Well, I will tell you right now, I will not make excuses for Cam Ward the way that I did the other two, because I felt that that was one of the biggest failings in my coverage of the previous two quarterbacks.

Will Levis, excuses did not need to be made.

We all understood that that was not the solution, and that needed to be, that needed to be nixed as soon as humanly possible, and that is ultimately what they chose to do in twenty twenty-five.

With Cam Ward, there is no excuses for Cam Ward this year.

You can say he is in a, in, on a rebuilding franchise, but he needs to be the reason that that rebuild is seen or viewed as heading in the right direction.

Right now, we don't have any evidence that he will be.

We have the, the concern, and there's a difference between concern and panic from what we saw out at training camp, or rather OTAs and mini camp, where media expressed concern, fans and some bad actors viewed it as panic, and, and immediately it became a hot button issue.

Quarterbacks will always be a hot button issue, but there is a difference between having general concern about a quarterback who was completing about half of his passes in OTAs, especially that quarterback completing only about half of his passes in his rookie season on a bad football team.

But this year's football team is substantially improved, substantially deeper.

The coaching staff is experienced as opposed to what he was dealing with last year.

All excuses have been removed from Cam Ward taking a meaningful step in the right direction to become one of the best quarterbacks, or rather one of the quarterbacks who you would consider top sixteen, top half of the league in the NFL this year.

I personally will not make excuses for Cam Ward.

I will see what he does.

I will react accordingly.

We will have those discussions.

If it goes poorly, then the coverage will reflect that.

If it goes positively, then the coverage will reflect that.

But in so doing, you understand that there is a greater burden on Ward than there have been on any of these other players, even Steve McNair, because McNair was not the number one overall pick in his draft.

And whether that's right, whether that's fair, it is something that people are going to view Ward through a different prism than every other Titans quarterback that has come before him.

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