The Tennessee Titans are just weeks away from presumably selecting their quarterback of the future with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.
All signs point to the team going with Miami’s Cam Ward, a five-year college starter who completed 67.2% of his passes for 4,313 yards and 39 touchdowns against only seven interceptions in his lone season with the Hurricanes this past year.
The Titans haven’t qualified for the playoffs since the 2021 season, when they went one-and-done after securing the AFC South crown, the AFC’s top seed, and a first-round bye. They haven’t won a playoff game since the 2019 postseason, when they made it to the AFC Championship Game as a Wild Card.
The team went just 3-14 last year. Factor in their 6-11 record during the 2023 season, and their seven-game losing streak to wrap up the 2022 season, and this is a franchise with just nine wins in their last 41 games, the worst mark in the NFL during that stretch.
But recent history in the AFC South suggests that a worst-to-first type of season in 2025 is far from out of the question.
As we have seen on a number of occasions in the past, no matter how flawed an NFL roster might seem, drafting the right signal caller can tend to provide an instant fix. Look no further than the Washington Commanders and what they did after years of misery with rookie No. 2 pick Jayden Daniels at quarterback this past season.
And for the Titans, they have another advantage: they are in the AFC South.
The AFC South is consistently one of the worst, if not the worst, division in the NFL. Its division champion has been the No. 4 seed in the AFC in the three most recent and five of the six most recent seasons, and it is the only AFC division without at least one Super Bowl representative since 2018 – with none since 2009.
Two of the Titans’ rivals have already taken full advantage of this weakness in recent years.
The Jacksonville Jaguars selected quarterback Trevor Lawrence with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. While they didn’t win the division in his first year, a lot of that can probably be pinned on the ill-fated tenure of former head coach Urban Meyer. In year number two, they went from last to first, and they even won a playoff game.
The following year, it was the Houston Texans who went last-to-first with the No. 2 overall pick in C.J. Stroud. They, too, won a playoff game, and they won the division – and another playoff game – this past season as well.
What’s to stop the Titans from doing the same thing if Ward turns out to be a bullseye selection?
Sure, the roster, from top to bottom, remains one of the worst in the AFC. But there are pieces in place that could help transform this offense if Ward performs at anything remotely close to a Pro Bowl level as a rookie.
Head coach Brian Callahan is an offensive-minded coach, and this team has pieces in place to make Ward successful right from the get-go.
Tony Pollard has rushed for over 1,000 yards in three straight seasons, and he posted a career-high during year number one in Nashville in 2024. He also amassed over 900 receiving yards during that three-year stretch.
Calvin Ridley is a solid number one wide receiver who has cleared 1,000 yards in every full season he’s played since 2020, and having been a part of the Jaguars team that saw the Texans unseat them as AFC South champions with a last-to-first effort in 2023, he’ll be looking to be a part of the right side of history this time around with Tennessee.
And then there is Chig Okonkwo, who continues to emerge as a reliable tight end, highlighted by his 70-yard touchdown in a game that saw the Titans actually beat the eventual division champion Texans this past year.
And let’s not forget about Callahan’s history before being brought in as Mike Vrabel’s replacement in 2024. Though it wasn’t in the AFC South, Callahan also led a worst-to-first effort with the Cincinnati Bengals as their offensive coordinator.
After Joe Burrow, the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, got hurt during his rookie season, the Bengals turned it around in his second year and not only won the AFC North, but advanced all the way to the Super Bowl.
That effort resulted in back-to-back AFC Championship Game appearances, as the Bengals returned to the AFC title decider the following year.
The Super Bowl may be a bit of a lofty, if not totally unrealistic, goal for the Titans this coming winter, even if you factor in whatever other weapons they might add for Ward in the NFL Draft.
But even the Bengals entered the 2021 season with the second-longest Super Bowl odds in the AFC. Again, flawed roster or not, the right quarterback can go a long, long way.