Cam Ward takes his intense personality to the next level when describing his summer plans before Titans training camp
Tough not to be excited about the No. 1 overall pick
NASHVILLE — Quarterback Cam Ward has simply put his head down and worked since the Tennessee Titans selected him No. 1 overall in April. As Tennessee's mandatory minicamp concluded on Thursday, Ward did not mince words on how he planned to spend the next six weeks.
The rookie kept it simple.
"Just workout, stay in the playbook and throw the f*** out the ball," said Ward.
Cam Ward hype growing daily at the Titans facility
July 22 is when the Titans will report back for training camp, according to coach Brian Callahan.
Ward's progress in the approximately month and a half he's been in Nashville has been impressive. Teammates, coaches and staffers alike have praised his mellow nature off the field and competitive toughness on it. Ward has not been perfect, however.
Callahan's emphasis has been about correcting mistakes his young passer makes, not avoiding them.
"That's where the growth occurs, Callahan said on Thursday. Especially for young players, is challenging situations. Trying to make practice more challenging than the game is going to be, ideally. And the hard part when you're doing just like periods of third down is it's just sort of endless. The rush is coming, they know it's third down, the pressure packages.
"I thought Cam (Ward) did a really nice job of handling answers. What are his answers versus our particular problems? And then made some really nice throws and then missed on a few others. That's a good thing because it gives us a chance to coach on it. I thought the two-minute drill was great coaching opportunities for us, for the entire offense and defense. Again, those are situations you can't get enough of and it's hard to do that every day. But we need as many of those opportunities as possible because again, third down, red zone and two-minute is where you win and lose football games in this league. And we'll have a stronger emphasis as training camp gets going, we get more practices stacked up to execute in those moments."
Titans need Cam Ward's innate ability to succeed
Tennessee was horrendous in critical moments under Callahan in Year 1.
As Callahan said, games are decided, offensively, on third down and in the red zone. The Titans were 20th (37.7%) on third down. Even worse inside of 20 yards, Callahan's unit ranked 24th (53.33%) when it came to scoring touchdowns in the red zone last season.
According to DVOA, Tennessee was the second worst total offense in the NFL at -23.4%.
"(Ward)'s gotten better every time he stepped out," said Callahan. "Every situation, a lot of things are new and every time he did it again or had an opportunity to see the rep again, did a nice job of taking the coaching points and improving on the next time out. And today will be his third time down here in the red zone. That's important, that's another critical area, an area we need to improve in.
"That timing happens—everything happens faster, the windows are much more condensed. It's always good, it's just you can't get enough work done in the red zone. So that'ss another nice way to cap off the camp for us is to work down there in the short part of the field and see if he's improved from the last time. So, excited about that."
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