Every Play Of Cam Ward’s Day: Breaking down every throw of Mandatory Minicamp Day 1 for the Tennessee Titans’ starting quarterback
Ever wonder what a full practice looks like for Cam Ward at Titans Mandatory Minicamp? Here’s every pass he attempted on Monday, charted and broken down for context.
Diehard NFL fans can’t help but make early summer practice a bigger deal than it is. I feel like we all know it in our gut, too. And the coaches on staff certainly understand this. Titans head coach Robert Saleh spent basically the entirety of his podium session on Monday finding different ways to say not to take this portion of practice too seriously.
But the people who say June football is absolutely meaningless are as wrong as the people who say it means everything. These are data points that matter, but they matter in the grand scheme of training camp and the beginning of the regular season. It’s all information on the timeline of player progress. Finding the signal in the noise this time of year is more difficult than it is during the actual season, and that’s where the pitfalls lie.
The most prominent subject of this conversation in Tennessee, of course, has been Cam Ward during OTAs. The Titans’ starting quarterback has had an up-and-down start to his off-season practice. But on day one of Mandatory Minicamp, he looked as the crisp we’ve seen him.
For those interested in obsessing over every detail, I decided to notate Cam’s entire day of passing Monday. Hopefully this is not only informative in terms of Cam Ward’s numbers today, but also gives you an idea of what a standard practice even looks like right now. If you compare these numbers to others who were on-site, your results may vary. This is proof of the fact that practice reps aren’t ruled on in the most official manner of all time. But more or less, this is what happened.
Every play of Cam Ward’s day at Mandatory Minicamp
The team period of practice began with some standard 11-on-11 drills. Here was my charting for each of his rows during this session:
- Complete, short middle, Pollard
- Complete, intermediate middle, Tate
- Incomplete, deep right, Tate (sack, defensive holding in secondary)
- Incomplete, intermediate right, Bellinger (double coverage contested)
His first incompletion of the day was from the middle of a collapsing pocket, that almost certainly would have resulted in a sack in a real game. He lofted the ball up to his left for Carnell Tate, streaking up the sideline and creating separation from two defenders. Through the traffic of a would-be-sack, Cam under-threw a lofted ball it fell incomplete. But defensive holding was called on the play, and so in a real game this would have been positive momentum for the offense.
His second incompletion of the day was one that would have been deemed a poor decision in a game, but it’s always hard to tell what the intention of the quarterback is in practice. He tried to fit the ball in a tight, unopen window to Daniel Bellinger.
After a couple of rounds of 11-on-11, we went to some 7-on-7 work in the middle of the field.
7-on-7
- Incomplete, short right, Spears (drop)
- Complete, short left, Bellinger
- Incomplete, intermediate left, Ridley (dropped INT, tight window)
This was a shorter period, and Ward only got three passes before they moved on to the red zone. His first pass should have been a completion to running back Tyjae Spears, but it was dropped. He then completed a pass to a common target on the day, Daniel Bellinger. And he finished by trying to push the ball down field to Calvin Ridley, but he was tightly covered, and it was a dropped interception in a tight window.
This is when the Titans moved down towards the end zone, and everybody’s attention turned to Cam Ward as he tried to put a couple of touchdowns on the board.
Redzone
- Complete, intermediate middle, Bellinger (scramble drill, directing traffic)
- Complete, short left, Helm (TD, sick arm angle)— Incomplete, dirted (sack)
- Incomplete, intermediate right, Bellinger (dropped TD)
- Complete, short left, Spears
- Complete, intermediate middle, Tate
- Complete, short middle, Robinson (TD)
His first pass was an impressive scramble drill completion to, yet again, Daniel Bellinger. There’s a chance this one turns into a touchdown in a real game, but the tackle was made around the 2 yard line. The very next play was a double-down on tight end touchdown attempts, this one successfully reaching the end zone on a cool arm angle submarine pass to Gunnar Helm.
This is one of the discrepancies between what I saw and what the referees called. Apparently the refs called this down short of a touchdown. But in talking with the rest of the reporters on-site afterwards, we all agreed we called it a touchdown. I straight up think the refs just got it wrong.
Cam kept things moving in what was his best period of the day, throwing a really nice touchdown strike to Daniel Bellinger that ended up falling through his hands. This should have been a touchdown catch. He next had to dirt the ball once on what would’ve been a sack, but capped off the period with a touchdown pass to Wan’Dale Robinson in the middle of the end zone.
Next, the Titans moved the ball back to around the opponent 40-yard line to work in what I’ll call the money zone. This is where the offense is within striking distance and tries to turn a field goal into a touchdown.
Money zone
- Complete, short middle, Spears
- Complete, short middle, Robinson
- Complete, short right, Tate
- Incomplete, short left, Robinson (miscommunication?)
- Incomplete, short left, Robinson (dropped TD)
It was unclear whether the intended purpose of this period was to move the ball quickly in a low time situation. It’s not like the on-field clock reflected a two minute drill of any kind. But the way that Ward was operating, they were dinking and dunking their way down the field with success. The only two incompletions came on a pair of passes to Wan’Dale Robinson to end the drive. Both to the left, the first one seemed to be a miscommunication between the quarterback and receiver based on their body language. The second was a touchdown strike Wan’Dale jumped for, got both hands on, and ended up dropping. Known for his sure-handedness and shorter stature, I guess the only way to get Wan’Dale Robinson to drop a pass is to throwing it over his head a little bit.
For a moment, this seemed like it was going to be the end of the practice. But then the first team offense went down to the low red zone one more time, and ran just a couple of plays with Cam Ward as the only participate at quarterback. In hindsight, these last two players were a mistake if you were trying to defend Cam Ward’s practice record on the day.
Low Redzone
- Incomplete, short left, Ayomanor (high)
- INT, short middle, Helm (Hooker INT in EZ)
The first pass was a bad miss on Ward’s part, sailing the ball over Ayomanor’s head in the end zone. And the second was the only interception of his day, a ball jumped by Amani Hooker to get the defense riled up and forced the offense to do up-downs.
In the end, my final count for his stats were:
- 11/21, 2 TDs, INT
After the practice, when I counted this up, the numbers were a little bit worse than I expected based on the vibe of the practice. There’s another lesson to be learned in that: the black-and-white stats don’t always tell the full story, especially in a padless practice.