Last season, the New England Patriots rode a tremendous amount of cap space, a fourth-place schedule, a new defensive-minded head coach, and a year-two leap from Drake Maye to a spot in Super Bowl LX.

If you were looking for teams with similar ingredients to concoct the same recipe this season, it would not take long to reach the Tennessee Titans.

The Titans hired Robert Saleh this past offseason, began the spring with a league-high $94.8 million in cap space, and began the year facing a fourth-place schedule after finishing a distant last in the AFC South with a 3-14 record. Add in the second year of quarterback Cam Ward this season, and you have ingredients to match what the Patriots faced a year ago.

Tennessee did spend in the offseason, adding new faces on both sides of the ball. However, the early returns are not what Titans fans were hoping for, as Tennessee fell to another 2025 fourth-place team, the New York Jets, by a final score of 23-10. And with the Titans’ lone touchdown coming in the fourth quarter, the game was not as close as the final score indicated.

So just where are we with Ward after Week 1?

It was a rather auspicious start for Ward and the Titans offense against the Jets. The second-year passer completed just 19-of-32 passes for 140 yards and a touchdowns, and while he did avoid throwing an interception, some of the advanced metrics were not too kind.

For example, Ward posted an Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt of just 4.2, ranking him 28th among all 32 qualified passers in Week 1. He fared a little better in QBR, as his mark of 34.3 ranked 26th in the league among qualified passers.

Ward was also in the middle of the pack when examining Quarterback Efficiency as charted by RBSDM, which examines Completion Percentage Over Expectation and Expected Points Added per Play:

(Ward is the red dot in the middle, right near Aaron Rodgers and Kirk Cousins).

Turning to what we saw on the field, if you are a Titans fan there are some silver linings, as well as some dark clouds.

We can start with some of the silver linings, beginning with this completion in the first quarter to rookie wide receiver Carnell Tate:

The Titans run a two-level concept to the left, with Tate on the deep out and Wan’Dale Robinson releasing to the flat. The Jets counter with Cover 6, running a Cover 4 look to the left side of the offense and Cover 2 to the right.

Tate breaks open and the throw from Ward is on-time, and in-rhythm. This is good quarterback play from the second-year passer.

So too was the touchdown pass to Elic Ayomanor, coming in the fourth quarter:

Ward reads the man coverage perfectly and throws the in-breaking route to Ayomanor with great anticipation. The placement on this throw works as well, as Ward keeps this as low as he can to give his receiver a chance to catch and cradle, and avoid a potential big hit. If he leads him up the field and/or keeps this high, Andre Cisco has a chance to make a play on the ball, or the body.

Part of the problem for Ward and Tennessee on Sunday was pressure, both those pressures given up by the blocking in front of him, and those moments where Ward contributed to the pressure he faced in the pocket. According to charting data from Pro Football Focus, Ward was pressured on 41% of his dropbacks on Sunday, 11th most in the NFL.

On those plays he completed 5-of-10 passes for 33 yards, and posted an Average Depth of Target of 4.0.

In some of those moments where Ward was pressured, he managed to turn the situation into a positive result. On this 3rd-and-3 situation from early in the game, Ward faces a free runner off the right side. He manages to avoid a sack, and scampers for a first down:

On this play from the third quarter, he does a good job of moving away from pressure while keeping his eyes downfield, and finds Robinson for a 9-yard gain to move the sticks:

But the issue with pressure in the pocket is that it eventually takes a toll on a quarterback, speeding up their process in the pocket. Take this play:

This is the same two-level concept ot the left, with a route to the flat and a deeper out route over the top of that. There is a brief window where Ward could snap off an anticipation throw on the deep out — as he did earlier in the game — and move the chains on this 3rd-and-8 situation.

But feeling the pressure, he bails the pocket to the right, and is eventually forced out of bounds for a 1-yard loss.

As with the overall theme of silver linings, there was this moment from late in the first half, where he manages the pocket well … but just misses the throw:

All told, the picture that Ward painted on Sunday against the Jets was that of a young quarterback with some of the pieces in place, such as pocket movement and anticipation, but not the complete picture. You might phrase it as the “floor” being there for Ward, but now it is a matter of reaching his potential ceiling.

Which is exactly how his new head coach described it:

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.

All of that is true. Brian Daboll is the seventh offensive coordinator that Ward has worked with over the past seven years, dating back to his time in college. He remains a young quarterback, having just started the first game of his second season in the NFL, who needs some stability around him.

The floor is there.

Getting to that ceiling, however, is the next big step.

However, for those Titans fans still looking for more silver linings, consider this.

If you want to continue to draw parallels to the 2025 Patriots, they lost their first game too.

To Geno Smith and the Las Vegas Raiders.