While Tennessee Titans fans were excited to see the offense at training camp, the team's defense is winning the early battles... for now.
The offense had a pair of rough outings on Wednesday and Thursday, prompting Jim Wyatt to open Thursday's "observations" article with this note: "From start to finish, I thought the defense set the tone in today's session. Defenders were consistently in the face of the quarterbacks, and they picked off two passes on the day. I heard the defense chirping all day, and for good reason."
Offensive players like Calvin Ridley, Chig Okonkwo, and Tony Pollard have talked about how nice it is to have continuity in the offense, but so far, those results aren't showing up. It seems like there are some growing pains with the changes (six new starters), and if fans aren't careful, they could start to get concerned that this is going to be another year where the offense spends the whole summer getting crushed by the defense.
Luckily, Cam Ward is a quarterback with a history of turning things around after slow starts, and this is a great test of his ability to lead and to develop in real time. On Saturday, the Titans held their third training camp practice, this time at Nissan Stadium. Ward already looked significantly better compared to the first two sessions.
Offenses generally start training camp slower than defenses, and having a rookie quarterback made that almost a certainty for the Titans this year. However, the playbook will expand, skill players start to move up and down the depth chart, and Ward's work ethic and leadership will lead to bounce-back days for the offense before July is over.
Go and watch what Ward did last year at Miami against Louisville, Duke, Cal, and Virginia Tech. The operation wasn't always clean in those games, whether it was terrible defensive performance, or dumb decision leading to a punishing turnover by Ward himself, but when it mattered, Ward walked away with the win.
You shouldn't judge a quarterback on wins and losses, but those games forced Ward to drag his team to victory despite their best efforts to lose. That is the quarterback the Titans drafted, and that is the guy that this fan base is excited to see for the next decade.
Ward is off to a slow start at training camp, but Saturday showed real progress, and the best is yet to come.