Cam Ward’s rookie revolution, L’Jarius Sneed’s return to form, Special Teams deliverance, and other reasons for Titans optimism

It’s too early to give up on a rebuilding year!

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
Add as preferred source on Google

It’s Week 3, and the Tennessee Titans are 0-2. Although many expected them to be, panic and despair are already creeping in anyway.

Well, I say it’s simply too early to throw in the towel on the 2025 Titans season. Poke fun at my optimistic nature all you’d like; your words can’t hurt me! Here are six reasons to remain optimistic about Tennessee after two weeks:

The Worst Possible Opening Script

It should go without saying, but somehow, I’m not sure it has: the first two weeks of this rebuilding team’s schedule were a nightmarish hand to be dealt.

Living both losses in the moment, I absolutely understand the frustration and lack of faith that’s crept in. It’s funny how in sports, no matter how much you mentally prepare for a bad thing to happen, embracing the reality of it finally happening is still such a hard pill to swallow.

And in a counterintuitive way, the closer you get to defying the odds, the more painful it feels to fall short anyway. That’s basically what has happened for the Titans in both of their first two games, against objectively superior opponents. If you’d told me they would be firmly in both games until the fourth quarter, with serious chances to win each, I probably would have told you in the preseason that such an outcome would exceed my expectations.

Traveling to Mile High in Week 1, for a rookie QB’s first career start, against a playoff-caliber opponent was a brutal spot to be put in out of the gate. That loss stung because the Broncos tried to give the game away, and the Titans played up to them in spurts. But that’s the best defense in the league for my money, and Tennessee’s new offense was ultimately ill-equipped to start with them.

Then in Week 2, they faced what I think is the best team on their entire schedule. I don’t think the Titans play a better football team than the (healthy Matthew Stafford) Los Angeles Rams this year. And they led that game through nearly three quarters of play!

Add on top of both brutal spots the fact that the renovated offensive line was facing two top-5 defensive fronts in the league, and had to do so without their best offensive tackle for the majority of it. Just bad, bad, bad breaks all around.

Now, to be clear, none of this is excusing the Titans’ poor play. I’m not here to tell you the Titans have simply gotten unlucky and are actually a good football team already. What I am saying, though, is that the facts on the ground make it likely that we look back on these first two weeks pretty differently a month or two from now, after some more neutral situations for this team.

Cam Ward Clearly Belongs

Take yourself back to any point in 2024. What unspeakable crimes would you have been tempted to commit if it meant feeling like you had a real franchise QB on your hands? Even Will Levis’s greatest defenders (myself included) were preaching patience, not that Levis had arrived.

I’m not going to say Cam Ward has already arrived through two games, but has anybody watched him so far and felt like he isn’t clearly an NFL starting quarterback? Has anybody looked at him and thought he put up a losing effort? Has anybody looked at him and felt like the Titans might have made a mistake taking him first overall?

No. We’re only two weeks into the season, and the question as to whether Ward belongs has already been answered in my mind. Now we’ll spend the next year or two seeing just how high up the NFL QB ladder he can climb. That’s a real luxury that shouldn’t be lost in the shuffle of a 0-2 start to a rebuilding year.

Rookie Receiver Revelations

I’ll keep saying it: the youth are our future. When Jon Robinson left this team with three consecutive draft classes he practically lit on fire, a full-blown rebuild was probably always in the cards. That’s not an exaggeration, either. In Robinson’s final three drafts, he made 23 selections. Chig Okonkwo and Roger McCreary are the only two from that crop still on this team. The Titans are a squad of mercenaries and extreme youth.

But through two games, the young players have looked promising. Particularly, the offensive weapons. TE Gunnar Helm needs more time and reps, but the handful of opportunities he’s gotten so far have been encouraging. And then there’s the pair of Day 3 receivers: Chimere Dike and Elic Ayomanor.

Dike has been a revelation on special teams. He’s been a player the Titans have been hunting for well over a decade. And it’s earned him an increasing role on offense. He’s already starting to phase veteran WR Tyler Lockett out of the rotation, some in the slot, which I reported all summer was the plan for him.

And then there’s my favorite Titan at the moment, Ayomanor. The Stanford prospect was a favorite of mine in this draft class, and since being drafted to Tennessee, I’ve been preaching his eventual emergence.

He worked his way from 136th overall pick to Day 1 starter over the offseason, as I predicted he would, and has made his presence known through two games. He’s second on the team in receiving yards and has the only touchdown of the year, working on a target share north of 20%. He’s as big a part of the Titans offense as any rookie receiver is across the league, and he’s making good on his opportunities.

The Return Of L’Jarius Sneed

Our long national L’Jarius Sneed nightmare has come to an end, and fingers crossed it stays that way. Sneed played sparingly in Week 1 to return to football conditioning shape, and then played his first full workload in over 300 days in Week 2. And he looked fine!

Was he God’s gift to cornerback? No, but he had a solid day against a Hall of Famer and demonstrated a perfectly acceptable floor for Titans CB1 play. They can work with what he gave in Week 2, which should improve as he regains his football shape. Having him as a viable piece of the defense is such a massive key to the Titans’ success.

Special Teams Deliverance

John “Bones” Fassel arrived in Nashville and quickly revitalized a struggling special teams unit. Think back to this time last year, how nervous you’d be watching any element of the Titans’ special teams group roll out onto the field.

The punt unit couldn’t protect the punter or cover downfield. The kickoff unit couldn’t line up correctly, and couldn’t cover downfield, either. It was the worst special teams unit in the entire NFL, and it was killing them basically every Sunday.

All that pain and suffering are now gone. Fassel was brought in to fix this group with his lengthy resume of special teams experience, and it’s off to a fantastic start.

Interior Offensive Line

The Titans’ protection of Ward has been frustrating so far, to say the least. But when you turn on the tape, the interior of this line has fared admirably against two of the best defensive fronts in the entire league.

Most of the Titans’ problems have been on the perimeter, with LT Dan Moore and the backups playing RT in JC Latham’s stead. Ward himself hasn’t done them a ton of favors at times, either. But on a lot of these protection breakdowns, you can pause the film and see the interior three — Peter Skoronski, Lloyd Cushenberry, and Kevin Zeitler — stonewalling the interior pass rush while both edges have been forfeit.

This interior can be a strength for the Titans. We’ve already seen them perform well in the run game between the tackles. RB Tony Pollard has been running with great success up the middle, thanks in large part to these three. Going forward, they should be a steadying force for a line trying to figure out the tackle positions.

Related Articles