NASHVILLE, Tenn. – I believe in making your own luck and in things eventually evening out.
And I’m not sure how much better the woeful Titans would fare against an easier schedule.
But it’s impossible to discount just how unfortunate their schedule draw has been this season.
Titans opponents have a league-high winning percentage of .569, .014 better than No. 2 Houston. New England is at the opposite end, with opponents at .368.
The bulk of an NFL schedule is determined by your division, which gives you six games, and a cycle that moves you through the rest of the league, which, this year, pits Tennessee against the AFC West and the NFC West.
Those two divisions feature several teams on the rise: Denver (9-2), the Rams (8-2), Seattle (7-3) and the Chargers (7-4). The Titans have already lost to three of them and host the fourth, the Seahawks, this weekend. So they are part of why those teams are good.
Of the eight opponents from the cyclical scheduling, only two are below .500. The Titans lost at 2-8 Las Vegas, and the 3-7 Cardinals gift-wrapped the Titans' lone win.
The AFC West and NFC West are currently 48-35. That's a ridiculous .578 winning percentage.
Next year the Titans will play the NFC East and the AFC North, whose residents are currently a combined 33-48 -- a just as ridiculous .407.
With a four-game hold on last place with seven to play, the Titans are also in line to play the last-place teams from the AFC East (currently the Jets), the AFC West (currently the Raiders), and the NFC North (currently the Vikings).
In those three games this year, the Titans drew the resurgent Patriots (9-2), who beat them, as well as upcoming games at 2-8 Cleveland, which has the NFL’s No. 2 yardage defense, and against the 2-8 Saints.
Their overall difficult slate of opponents has come with a difficult slate of defenses.
Zach Lyons added up the defenses Cam Ward has faced as compared to other quarterbacks drafted first overall in their first 10 games.
Here are the last few rookie QBs drafted 1.01 & the avg. rank of the defenses faced through their first 10 starts#Titans Cam Ward has faced the hardest defensive slate by far based on EPA/pass allowed & the hardest slate by a smidgen based on Passing Success Rate Allowed pic.twitter.com/4ujY25x708
— Zach Lyons (@TheZachLyons) November 18, 2025
In a best-case scenario, Ward will ultimately benefit from having run such a gauntlet at the start of his career.
A schedule like this has broken quarterbacks before — physically and mentally. Ward is on pace for 70 sacks, yet he hasn’t appeared on an injury report all season. His mindset has held up too. He stays steady and confident, never showing outward frustration despite the constant pounding.
The Titans' schedule shows how meaningless the traditional preseason strength-of-schedule rankings are, Tennessee came in at 29th based on the .450 winning percentage of its 2025 opponents in 2024.
But winning percentage from one season doesn't correlate to what a team is the next season.
Warren Sharp takes a far smarter tact, basing the strength of schedule on betting odds that look at what a team is expected to do in the coming season, not on what it did in the season prior.
He ranked the Titans eighth in the preseason.