Titans’ riskiest roster decision leaves no room for error in a spot where fans already have no patience after disastrous 2024

The Tennessee Titans head to Denver this weekend to officially kick off the Cam Ward era, and amongst the many new things about this team is a new punt returner.

I have never spent so much time talking about punt returner in my life. Perhaps a month from now, we’ll look back on August and laugh at just how intrigued we were by who would handle the role when things are status quo and boring already. The Titans coaching staff sure hopes that’s the case, and I’d imagine fans share that sentiment: let’s stop having to think about special teams!

But the 2024 Titans left us no choice but to think about special teams, at least until we see the John “Bones” Fassel iteration of their unit in 2025 provide some much-needed stability. And before we’ve even gotten to Week 1, there are reasonable questions being asked of the coaching decisions being made.

Finally Finding Special Teams Stability… Right?

In the back half of 2024, things actually stabilized well enough in this phase. But it was far too late to matter. The damage had been done. Now, the message throughout 2025 so far has been calming. Fassel has a long track record as a great special teams coordinator. Key role-player positions on special teams have been addressed. Some young players have developed to be able to hold down that unit as well, eliminating all the catastrophic nonsense we saw last fall. Everybody wants to believe that to be the case, of course, but now we’re having to talk about the way the coaching staff has handled the punt returner job.

The long-story-short on how August transpired at punt returner is this: by the middle of camp, it was clear that the only competition at returner was WRs James Proche, Chimere Dike, and Jha’Quan Jackson. Proche was getting the most run in preseason games, and was the front runner for the job if he made the 53-man roster. At the beginning of camp, most folks assumed he’d be on the outside looking in. But he was a consistent standout throughout August as a receiver, and so he made a lot of final 53-man roster projections.

The Problem Proche Presented

The coaching staff felt James Proche had earned a spot and wanted him in, but the roster math was simply untenable in the end. See, having Proche make the team as WR7 and starting at punt returner forced a choice Callahan & Co. didn’t want to make.

Teams don’t typically keep 7 receivers active on game days. So who would be inactive if Proche was kept? Not him, he’s the starting returner. It wouldn’t be Bryce Oliver, he’s a starting gunner and core special teamer. It obviously wouldn’t be Ridley, Lockett or Ayomanor. And as much as some fans would have liked it at this point, it wouldn’t have been Van Jefferson. So what then? Does rookie Chimere Dike get the boot by process of elimination? Talk about keeping a guy from developing in a rebuilding year! They didn’t want to do that either.

So Proche was the odd man out, even though he handled a lot of the preseason reps. Jackson never stood a chance at making the roster, so his reps in practice and in preseason games were confusing to many keeping up with camp. Dike was mostly asked to focus on his wide receiver development, and only got a couple opportunities to make a fair catch in a game. That’s the crux of why so many folks are worried about him suddenly being a starting two-way returner: we haven’t really seen him do it!

Coaching Staff Confidence In Dike

That’s the point here: I’m not sure it will be fine or that it’ll be a disaster… it’s just that I have no idea what it’s going to be. It’s an objectively risky decision to make, particularly for a team who struggled so mightily last September on special teams. There is no more patience for this unit. And many see a known-quantity in Proche being cast aside out of the gate for an unproven rookie.

Things are only made more worrisome when you go back to August 20th, when I asked Special Teams Coordinator John Fassel if he’d be confident in Dike’s ability to return in Week 1:

“Probably not yet.” Now 2 weeks later, and he’s a two-way starter. How much changed in that amount of time? Apparently enough to change their minds!

But when we spoke to Fassel again this week about the decision, here’s what he had to say about whether something changed:

Whether it was a calculated process decision, a hindsight correction, or simply incompetence, the change has been made. In college, Dike did do some returning. The sample size isn’t large, but the limited results were strong. At Florida in 2024, he had 14 punt returns for 190 yards, 2 muffs, and 27 fair catches. At Wisconsin in 2023, he tallied 12 punt returns for 108 yards, 1 muff, and 17 fair catches. That track record—paired with exclusively practice reps returning the ball—is what the coaching staff is basing their confidence on.

I pray we don’t have to spend any of September talking about special teams roster decisions once the games start. Everybody involved would prefer to talk about much more interesting things. But if this decision looks shaky early, the coaching staff will have left us no choice.