With just under a month until the 2025 NFL Draft we now have a pretty good idea of who the Titans are going to take with the No. 1 overall pick. All signs are pointing to Miami QB Cam Ward having his name called first, with the Titans spending ample time with Ward at his pro day on Monday, paired with the obligatory dinner with the prospect — all things that happen when a team is zeroing in on a player.
As a result Ward is now the runaway favorite to be the No. 1 pick, being given -750 odds on Fanduel, with Abdul Carter being the next-closest pick at +500.
Selecting Ward is the obvious pick. The clear selection. It’s also absolutely the wrong move, and the Titans are going to screw this up. What will ensue is a spin campaign to talk up Ward, and the Titans desperately try to move away from their now-infamous comment that the team would not pass on a “generational talent” with the No. 1 pick. Actually they’ll pass on two in Abdul Carter and Travis Hunter, instead reaching for arguably the worst quarterback prospect taken with a No. 1 overall pick — maybe ever.
None of this is to say that Ward will be a bad NFL quarterback. In fact, there’s every chance he could be quite good. The problem is that you don’t draft “quite good” with the No. 1 pick. You have to find a transformative talent that can turn a franchise around, and Cam Ward simply isn’t it — but this is patently on brand for a Titans team adept at whiffing on skill position players with their early picks.
Despite having four general managers in the last two decades, the Titans can only boast early round success with three skill position players since 2005: RB Chris Johnson in 2008, RB Derrick Henry in 2016, and WR A.J. Brown in 2019. The rest is a veritable who’s-who of mediocrity.
- QB Will Levis
- WR Treylon Burks
- WR Corey Davis
- QB Marcus Mariota
- WR Dorial Green-Beckham
- RB Bishop Sankey
- WR Justin Hunter
- WR Kendall Wright
- QB Jake Locker
- WR Kenny Britt
- RB Chris Henry
- QB Vince Young
- RB LenDale White
Bad teams aren’t created simply by making bad draft picks, but also consistently finding mediocrity. While the Titans have been quite good at drafting linemen and linebackers to bolster their system, something has been consistently rotten with this team’s skill position scouting, which leads the organization to taking big bets on players that have no business being taken as high as they do.
The biggest issue with the Marcus Mariota pick a decade ago was that Mariota was a scheme-dependent quarterback who had the physical tools, but we really had no idea if he had the ability to translate into the NFL after playing in an QB-friendly Oregon offense. That never materialized, so he struggled.
This is exactly the issue with Cam Ward as well. A player who was functionally fine, but spent his entire college career running an Air Raid in Washington State and Miami. It’s an offensive system that routinely puts up big college numbers and lets a QB show off — but players routinely fail who come out of Air Raids into the pros. Now one is going to go with the No. 1 overall pick.
This quote from Ward is also setting off some major alarm bells.
“I just think the playbooks match up not only for there, but Cleveland and New York. A lot of those three teams did the same things that we did in Miami. So I think it’ll be plug and play.”
While it’s clear Ward himself is trying to talk about his play in a way that he can solidify his draft spot, I also really, really hope he doesn’t believe this to be true. There are no similarities between the West Coast offenses those three NFL teams run, and the Air Raid he led in Miami. It won’t be “plug and play,” but take a significant amount of work to learn an NFL system. If a young QB is downplaying how difficult it’s going to be, well, that concerns me.
There’s also simply a raw talent issue here too. Ward would be the worst quarterback prospect taken in the Top 3 based on the NFL’s scouting reports since the league posted its own talent grades in 2011.
- Andrew Luck: 7.90
- Cam Newton: 7.50
- Robert Griffin III: 7.50
- Trevor Lawrence: 7.40
- Sam Darnold: 7.10
- Joe Burrow: 7.07
- Jameis Winston: 7.00
- Jared Goff: 7.00
- Mitchell Trubisky: 7.00
- Bryce Young: 6.82
- Blake Bortles: 6.80
- Marcus Mariota: 6.80
- Kyler Murray: 6.80
- Caleb Williams: 6.74
- Jayden Daniels: 6.73
- C.J. Stroud: 6.70
- Carson Wentz: 6.70
- Baker Mayfield: 6.70
- Zach Wilson: 6.50
- Drake Maye: 6.50
- Trey Lance: 6.47
- Cam Ward: 6.39
Granted this is just one talent evaluator’s rubric — but it’s simply astonishing to see what an outlier Ward is among his peers who were taken with top picks in the last 15 years. There’s certainly nothing to indicate that he’s a “generational talent,” like the Titans assured everyone they were going to be taking with the No. 1 overall pick.
This is where this all gets tricky. Obviously quarterback is the single most-impactful upgrade the Titans can make. Hell, last year they benched Will Levis and played Mason Rudolph for god’s sake. The issue is that while Ward might make Tennessee a better team immediately, they’re once again losing sight of the forest for the trees. A truly generational talent, someone like Abdul Carter or Travis Hunter might not lead to more wins immediately — but they’re without a doubt the best possible players. Guys who can help build a foundation for success. From there the team can look to strike in a much better QB draft as we’ll see in 2026, when Arch Manning, Garrett Nussmeier, and Drew Allar will enter the NFL.
Instead the Titans are going to make the same mistake as they did a decade ago in taking Marcus Mariota. Waiting for his to blossom, then realizing it wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t just that Mariota wasn’t good, but it led to the Titans trying to put talent around him in 2017, hoping he could still be great. In that draft Tennessee took WR Corey Davis with the No. 5 overall pick. The next QB off the board that could have been theirs? Patrick Mahomes.
This is going to be a mess, no matter how the Titans try to spin this pick.
