NASHVILLE — Tennessee Titans coach Robert Saleh said the quiet part out loud about quarterback Cam Ward on Monday. Tennessee’s third coach in four seasons began his tenure with a disastrous 23-10 loss to the New York Jets in Week 1. 

Saleh, who last oversaw things in New York, said in the aftermath that he was surprised with how poorly the Titans performed.

In a Zoom press conference with reporters on Monday, Saleh addressed Ward’s struggles in a way that should concern every Titans fan paying attention.

The Titans were soundly beaten across the board. Offense, defense, special teams, coaching. No phase was spared. But none of it was more concerning than Ward’s poor performance as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.

Cam Ward’s struggles are magnified by the quarterback class around him

Ward’s statistics were bad, but that’s not even really what stands out.

What is concerning is a general lack of execution from the former No. 1 overall pick, and it becomes even more glaring when you consider the performances of the other quarterbacks from his draft class on Sunday.

Tyler Shough lost as the starting quarterback for the New Orleans Saints but put on a spectacular fourth-quarter show to bring them back within a point before they came up short. Jaxson Dart, the only other quarterback selected in the first round alongside Ward, threw three touchdown passes in a 28-20 win over the Cowboys. Any doubts about Shough as a second-round pick or Dart were alleviated by their Week 1 performances. If you’re a Saints fan or a Giants fan, you don’t have to worry about your quarterback situation.

And yet here’s Ward, with a better draft pedigree than any of them, a better college football player than any of them, still struggling mightily in the most routine phases. The Titans offensive line is not good, but it’s not nearly as bad as it’s made to look by a quarterback who can’t hang in the pocket, who gets happy feet, who is inaccurate at times, and who creates his own pressure.

Robert Saleh admits Cam Ward is ‘at the floor’ of what it takes to be an NFL quarterback

After the game, I asked Saleh whether Ward is more of a work in progress than the coaching staff might have initially realized. 

“They’re all a work in progress,” said Saleh. “Every single player is…even the veterans have a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of things that we’ve got to clean up. I’m not trying to shield the quarterback. So, try to bear with me on this.

“You look at Cam, he’s had seven different coordinators over the last seven years, you know, so he’s trying to build a foundation and we’re trying to build a foundation for him. We’re trying to give him some stability and we’re trying to give him things that are repetitive week after week after week without having to reset. So his growth will happen throughout the year. His growth is going to happen next year and the year after. This young man is at the floor again of what it takes to be an NFL quarterback, but he has all the tools, the mental makeup to get to where he needs to go.”

I understand the sentiment.

The follow-up question, however, writes itself. How long can you continue to refer to them as kids? Because they’re not. They’re professional athletes. 

I understand that Saleh isn’t trying to shield the quarterback. But I think he told us everything we need to know about Ward in that answer, coupled with his decisions to punt in plus territory throughout the game.

The Surrender Index tells the story of how little the Titans trusted their offense

There’s an account on Twitter called the Surrender Index that evaluates punting decisions on a cowardice scale, searching for “the world’s saddest punt.”

It determines whether a decision was backed by numerical data or whether it just looks poor relative to what a coach should be doing in a given situation.

The Titans had three punts highlighted by the Surrender Index on Sunday, two of them in plus territory.

The first: Tennessee decided to punt to the Jets from the Jets’ 49 on fourth-and-3 with 1:18 remaining in the second half while losing 10-3. That punt earned a Surrender Index rating of 9.96, placing it in the 92nd percentile of all cowardly punts since 1999.

The second: Tennessee decided to punt from the Jets’ 45 on fourth-and-4 with 13:09 remaining in the third quarter while losing 10-3. A Surrender Index of 15.51, good for the 95th percentile of all punts since 1999.

The third, and the biggest: Tennessee decided to punt from the Jets’ 43 on fourth-and-9 with 1:12 remaining in the third while losing 20-3. A Surrender Index of 17.48, placing it in the 96th percentile of all punts since 1999.

Let me not make this exclusively about Ward, because the entire offense was poor on Sunday. 

But it is an indictment of an offense quarterbacked by Cam Ward that the coaching staff felt they had to punt in those specific situations against a team like the Jets. Frankly, the Jets belong in a completely different class than the Tennessee Titans based on Sunday’s performance.

Week 1 can be a liar. But I think all of that was pretty telling.