NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Titans are trying to downplay expectations ahead of the 2026 season. While the reasoning does track, it should be no excuse for another underperforming year.

Rosters around the league have taken shape.

They’re fluid, of course, but 53-man rosters now offer a clearer picture about which teams are relying on an influx of youth and which ones are in a more veteran stage of their cycle. Tennessee falls squarely in the former category. Both general manager Mike Borgonzi and head coach Robert Saleh made that abundantly clear when they spoke to the media this week.

Borgonzi is setting realistic expectations for Titans fans

Borgonzi spoke first this week and was asked whether the bar for success in 2026 is simply general improvement as opposed to truly competing. 

His answer was telling. He acknowledged that nobody is going to stand at a podium and claim the Titans expect to win all 17 games, especially given where this franchise stands right now. I appreciate that approach because it’s much more in line with my own thinking. All of this is very much a work in progress. Including the quarterback, Cam Ward.

Ward is a former No. 1 overall pick.

I think his situation is comparable to Bryce Young on a number of fronts. Ward is a little taller, so he doesn’t have that particular deficiency working against him, but neither player entered the league as the best athlete you could have had at the top of the draft. Relative to Joe Burrow, Trevor Lawrence, Caleb Williams, or any of the recent No. 1 overall picks, Ward has obvious limitations. 

I would not describe Cam Ward as a good player right now. 

I don’t think he’s a plus. I think he’s currently well below average. There’s a part of that that’s okay because you understand the context of his situation, a young quarterback on a rebuilding team learning a new system. But some fans will argue that Tennessee spent the No. 1 overall pick on this player, gave up multiple first-round picks in a trade option the Giants offered them in 2025, and he needs to be Burrow in Year 2, or even Baker Mayfield, or even Kyler Murray. 

I just don’t think Cam is that on a number of fronts.

And you can’t ignore the possibility that Ward may not fail outright but may not succeed here with the Titans either. He could become another first-round quarterback who has to go elsewhere to find it, like Mayfield or Sam Darnold before him. 

Far too premature to have that discussion, but it’s a reality that exists.

Saleh’s tone has shifted since he first arrived

Saleh has been more publicly optimistic than Borgonzi about the state of the Titans.

Whether that’s about making the playoffs for the first time in 4 years or staking his job on Ward not failing. But he keeps bringing up the youth on the roster, and that is also a means of downplaying expectations, even though he initially set the bar much higher when he first arrived in Nashville.

After Saleh brought up the team’s youth again, I asked him about the balance between urgency and excuse-making. Here’s what he said:

“Yeah, it’s in gear now. There’s no excuse making. There’s no leash. We’ve got to get great very, very fast. But I made the comment a couple of times with regards to this being our floor. Like, you give a young guy reps, they’re going to get better. They have no choice but to get better. Forgive me, I’m going to be a little winded on this one. You know, like a coach always wants a veteran out there because they know what to do. They’re where they’re supposed to be, but they’re not exactly running the 40 they used to run when they ran at the combine.

“A scout wants the young guy because they’re fast, explosive, but a coach is afraid of them because you have no idea what you’re going to get play to play. So the objective is how quickly can you get that young guy to play like that veteran while he’s still running the 40 he ran at the combine, right? And the best way to do that is to give him reps. And we’ve got a young group. An explosive group. There’s a mixture of some really cool veterans that are still in their prime, um, on this team. And, uh, and the hope is that the combination of veterans pulling the young guys with them, uh, we get to that, that point of, uh, elite speed very quickly.”

Per Bill Speros at Rotowire, Tennessee has the eighth youngest roster in football at an average age of 26 years and 190 days.

The Miami Dolphins are the youngest team in the NFL at 25 years and 207 days. Atlanta has the oldest roster on average this year, with the Falcons coming in at 27 years and 220 days. That creates an age range of 2 years and 13 days. 

Maybe that’s more substantial that it appears, but citing average age of a roster relative to a team’s performance is overrated in my opinion.

Six wins is a coup, and that’s deeply embarrassing

In Saleh’s defense, I think it’s a reasonable explanation.

But it’s also continuing to set the bar lower than most of the fan base wants it set. Should fan expectations dictate how the coaching staff and front office approach this thing? Absolutely not. In fact, Saleh’s caution is much more in line with the thinking I have about this team, which is that if Tennessee wins 6 games, it’s going to be a coup.

That’s deeply embarrassing.

That’s how far down this franchise is, that 6 wins would feel akin to making the playoffs around here, just to avoid being one of the absolute worst football programs in the league at every turn. Because they absolutely have been that.

No franchise has a worse record than Tennessee’s 19-49 over the last four seasons.

I think Saleh and Borgonzi are getting more realistic now that they’ve seen more of their roster. The early onset of the offseason brought a new coaching staff, excitement over new players, and optimism that the pieces could work. What they’ve found is that they’re not nearly as far along as they would have liked to be, especially at quarterback. So they’re cooling things off, leaning on youth as an explanation for the mistakes that will inevitably come.

I think it’s the correct approach, even if the tone has changed.