Titans coach Brian Callahan calls out Cam Ward with hot seat burning
If the Titans’ play hasn’t made Brian Callahan the favorite to be the first coach fired this year, publicly calling out the franchise’s No. 1 overall pick surely won’t help his job security.
Following a lifeless 20-10 road loss to the Raiders on Sunday in which rookie quarterback Cam Ward yet again did not play well, the embattled coach ripped his team and specifically called out the top pick.
“I am incredibly discouraged by the outcome,” Callahan said after his team fell to 1-5. “We felt good coming into the game. To not be able to perform well on offense and not be able to score any points and then lose the game is disappointing. And we all gotta be better, Cam’s a part of that too, Cam’s gotta play better football as well. We gotta coach better, we gotta play better, all those things.
“It’s not all just him, but he is a part of it and we’d like to be able to start seeing some more good football being played and we got to do a better job.”
Callahan is in his second season coaching the Titans and has not given the team’s front office, nor its fans, much to celebrate in this limited sample size.
The Titans went 3-14 in his first season, which allowed them to grab the No. 1 pick and draft Ward.
Adding the top quarterback in the class raised expectations in Nashville, but the Titans have been an unmitigated disaster through six weeks.
This team is going to be judged more on how Ward fares than the wins and losses, and the early results are not very good.
Ward has just three touchdown passes to four interceptions with a quarterback rating of 25.0, and has thrown for just 1,101 yards (183.5 per game).
He’s completing just 55 percent of his passes and has been sacked a league-high 25 times, while rarely showing the dual-threat skills that launched him up draftboards.
In Sunday’s loss to a bad Raiders team, Ward completed 26 of 38 passes for 222 yards with one touchdown and interception, while losing two fumbles.
He had one particularly brutal sequence in the last minute when he fumbled the ball while not being touched to end the Titans’ last drive.
Two weeks ago, Ward said “we ass” to describe the team and, well, that adjective may still apply. He said Sunday that the Titans are not an “efficient offense.”
“Really disappointed,” Ward said. “Just as an offense, just myself, anytime you got three turnovers you’re not going to have a chance to win the game, especially two of them were real bad turnovers … I just gotta continue to can’t let happen. We got to continue to keep going.”
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The Titans have three more games before the bye and all come against teams with winning records in the Patriots, Colts and Chargers.
Plenty of eyes will be watching to see if the Titans stick with Callahan, who succeeded Mike Vrabel after his surprising dismissal following the 2023 season.
The Titans’ failures over the next few seasons will be tied to Ward, for better or worse, and those around the organization will have to judge whether Callahan — an offensive-minded coach — can bring out the best in the quarterback or if they have to find someone else who can.
“It’s disappointing all the way around that at this point we can’t find a way to play better offensively,” Callahan said. “And that’s why we’re at where we’re at.”
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