Three lessons the Titans and fans need to learn from Cam Ward and Mason Kinsey’s touchdown play that went wrong

In one sense, I’m so pleased to be back to talking about actual football plays. A lot of the Tennessee Titans’ 2025 season has been narratively marred by things off the field, and it’s kept me from diving into actual football. You people haven’t cared as much about the actual football for large stretches of this season, and I cannot blame you! But this week, we have an actual football play that’s getting a lot of buzz and debate online. God bless.

On the other hand, though, it does initially feel like we’re beating the discourse around a single incompletion to death. The specific play everybody is talking about is this deep incompletion to Mason Kinsey that would have likely resulted in an explosive touchdown in the second half.

Kinsey turns inside, Cam Ward throws outside, and the drive ends up turning into a FG instead of a touchdown. When you lose the game by 3 points in the end, singular moments like this carry a lot of weight!

Debate over whose fault this was has raged online this week, and I see three big picture lessons that both fans and the team itself can take away from this near-touchdown:

Assigning Blame: Cam Ward or Mason Kinsey

I’m not somebody that will pretend he knows more about X’s and O’s than I actually do. When I know something to be a fact, I state it as fact. When I’m not sure, I try to say so. And when something is completely over my head, I ask the smart football sources I know both in and out of the league a bunch of questions and lean on their knowledge. Embody Ted Lasso, be curious instead of judgmental! Nothing is worse that “loudly wrong guy” on the internet, of which there are dozens on a topic like this one.

Here’s what I know to be true about the design of this play: This is “Big Sail”, and the receiver on the Kinsey route is meant to turn back inside after the second break up field. Why Cam Ward threw the ball like he was expecting him to turn back over his outside shoulder, I do not know. Maybe it was a mental mistake, maybe it was inaccuracy, or maybe it was miscommunication. My bet is on the latter, because Cam Ward and Mason Kinsey don’t have a rapport. They haven’t repped this together at all. I think Kinsey probably turned up field a step or two early, which was reinforced by what OC Nick Holz said publicly at his Tuesday presser.

So I think Kinsey needed to get closer to the boundary, which is where his blame lies.

But would I like for Cam Ward to be an elevator of the offense in this moment? Yes. It seems like he more so threw to a spot than to his receiver in the moment. I don’t think the pressure on him as he rolled out was doing him any favors, to be fair. But the receiver is screaming wide (I mean, wide) open. This is where I’d really love to see Ward float a ball downfield every once in a while. It’s a lot of lasers from him on deep passes so far, which is common for young QBs. But deep completions are as much a WR stat as they are a QB stat, and he needs to start giving his guys a chance to pull their half of the weight!

Bottom line, the primary culprit here to me is lack of reps between quarterback and wide receiver. Not being on the same page is an unfortunate result of so many injuries, and it’s especially painful when a game-changing play is missed.

Good play design that isn’t unique to the Titans

In the wake of all this debate, an extremely common comment I’ve seen is that this is a poor play design, and a reflection of the Titans terrible coaching staff. I cannot wrap my head around this for a couple of different reasons, but boy is it a common complaint here.

So, a couple of things. First of all, why are we all wailing about a terrible play design that got a play as open as you’ll ever see anybody in the NFL get? That doesn’t seem all that terrible to me!

As for this idea that asking Ward to roll right and then throw to the inside shoulder is a ridiculously difficult, unfair ask… I just plain is not. Trust me, I checked with a lot of professionals on this. This is not an unduly difficult throw to make, especially if you set your feet correctly. This is a high level NFL throw that NFL QBs can make. The fact that the QB is rolling out and it seems like he’s going to just throw the intermediate sail route to the boundary but then subverts expectations isn’t a bug, it’s the feature. This is designed specifically to make the defense think that! It’s not unnecessarily counterintuitive; it’s necessarily counterintuitive.

Thirdly, and most importantly, this is not a play unique to the Titans whatsoever.

I know most Titans fans despise this coaching staff, and trust me, there are plenty of things out there that you can latch onto if you just want to bash them for the rest of the year. But the specific design of “their” play here is not one of them. I don’t know where some fans get this notion that each team has their own play designs, but it just isn’t true. Everybody runs pretty much the same stuff! It’s the wrinkles, handful of bespoke plays, and most importantly the timing of the plays that differentiate these teams (besides the real determining factor, of course: the players running them).

As you’ll see in the clips linked above, this is something that’s in every playbook in the league. It’s a standard concept. And it can create explosives! Lest we forget, the Titans had their own explosive touchdown ripe for the taking in this instance. They just missed it.

Xavier Restrepo is the familiarity Cam Ward needs

The third and final lesson here is for the team, and it’s that it might just be time for some familiarity for Cam Ward. His name is Xavier Restrepo, and he’s the receiver you guys have done just about everything in your power to keep buried at the bottom of the depth chart all year.

Now listen, I’m not here to say Restrepo is some giant gamechanger. The team clearly thinks he stinks, and I’m not saying they’re wrong. But when we’re dealing with this caliber of WR needed to run routes on a Sunday because everybody is hurt, I’m inclined to say the familiarity Ward has with Restrepo might just overpower the higher ceiling and versatility of somebody like Mason Kinsey. I think Ward and Restrepo’s rapport would show through in moments like this. And you can read here about how this week might just be the week Restrepo gets his shot.