Titans' Loss to Seahawks is a Cam Ward Progress Report

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Moral victories are a touchy subject and no one uttered the words in questions or answers in the interview room or locker room after the Titans lost 30-24 to the high-quality Seahawks at Nissan Stadium.

But these Titans weren’t devastated after this one, and I didn't feel as if they needed to be. 

They lost their first eight games by an average of 14.5 points. It’s been 5.3 for the last three. Reasonable people, including this one, said the team should be judged primarily on Cam Ward’s learning curve this season.

Gunnar Helm
Gunnar Helm/ Angie Flatt

In many ways, this felt like his best game.

“The only thing that matters is a win or a loss, so that sums it up,” Ward said. 

He has his third-most yards (256) and third-best completion percentage (.666), didn’t throw an interception or fumble and ran a season-high six times for a season-high 37 yards. 

His supporting cast is worse than imagined, with the offensive line not as much better as hoped, Tony Pollard hitting his wall and Calvin Ridley set to miss 10 games when it's over.

He’s got plenty of progress to make. Yet he’s clearly ascending. 

This was just the second game of his rookie season in which he didn’t turn the ball over, and those both came in the last three. In that stretch of one-score losses, his passer rating is up from 74.8 in the first eight games to 86.8.

The Seahawks sacked Ward four times -- that’s a number that has not been improving in recent weeks. But he did some excellent escape work, like on a first-quarter second-and-9 when he hit Chig Okonkwo as a defender had him wrapped and was taking him down and the tight end turned it into a 10-yard gain.

“It's taking that next step, and that's what he's done,” Mike McCoy said. “We've been saying it from day one, the way he competes, the way he works every day. When we first came into the off-season program, the early mornings, staying late, things like that, it's starting to pay off.

“We're going to turn the film on (Monday) and look at some things. We'll clean it up and say, 'Hey, you've got to do these things better.' But just the command of the offense and some checks that he made during the game, I really liked the way he played.”

While the guy the Titans hope is their star offensive player looks to get moving, the Seahawks' firepower was too much for Tennessee. Sam Darnold looked for Jaxon Smith-Njigba a game-high 10 times for a game-high eight catches and his 167 yards more than tripled the Titans' top pass-catcher's output (Gunnar Helm, 51 yards).

Smith JSN beat Amani Hooker, who got no help from Kevin Winston, on a 63-yard TD catch and beat Winston for a 56-yard gain. (He also scored on a 13-yard catch.) 

Peter Skoronski has turned into a high-quality guard for the Titans, and in 2023 the franchise was very much thinking about building inside-out and fortifying its line. But line issues still plague them and three drafts later they will still desperately seek a difference-maker like Smith-Njigba, who was taken nine picks after Skoronski. 

He is on pace for 2,029 receiving yards. That would come in 17 games and be a new single-season record, topping Calvin Johnson’s 1,964 that came in 16 games in 2012.

In their 11th loss, the Titans got a jolt from Mike McCoy, who kept the offense on the field for seven fourth downs, of which they converted five. Previously, he’d been witheringly and unflinchingly conservative in big moments with a chance to press the issue for a nothing-to-lose team.

To go that often told us there the Titans predetermined they’d finally be aggressive, even if McCoy stuck to this idea that game flow dictated his thinking. 

Another big spark arrived when Chim Dike fielded a punt on the left side of the field and tracked 90 yards to the end zone, finding his way east-west to the opposite sideline before finishing the work north-south. That score cut Seattle’s lead to 23-10.

Tennessee surrendered a third TD and trailed 30-10 – Ward talked about the team’s poor middle-of-the-game play habit -- before rallying at the end for a 73-yard drive topped by Ward’s running score and a 62-yard march capped with a Dike 1-yard TD catch.

There were only 43 seconds left after that, and an unsuccessful onside kick ended it. 

“Cam’s getting better every week in different areas, I like at the end how he was battling, you could feel it,” Cody Barton said. “I told him after that series and I told him after the game, we need more of that (from everybody). That’s what I am talking about, the consistency from every player. We’re still looking for that win, that goddamn win. 

“Everyone is going to stay positive, stay up. Bring that energy.”

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