NASHVILLE, Tenn. – With eight games left in his rookie season, Cam Ward may play some games that are cleaner than others.
Maybe there is a big click-in moment for him when it comes to NFL quarterback mechanics.
Far more likely, we’re at a point where it’s unreasonable to expect great procedural progress from him this year.
Consider this: When Mike McCoy took over, he restructured Titans’ practices so that the individual segment of practice, the piece where position groups work by themselves, increased from seven minutes to 12.
The team works on first and second downs on Wednesdays, third down on Thursdays and red zone and situational game elements on Friday. Early in each of those practices comes the individual period, a total of 36 minutes a week.
That practice segment sometimes entails some switch-ups but usually follows a familiar script as the QBs work on different things. One is weaving their way forward and back through five long pads on the ground.
Additionally, the quarterbacks will throw routes to receivers, tight ends and running backs in another period. Ward may be thinking about some footwork during that, but it’s hardly a primary theme as they work on connecting.
During special teams periods, there is some more quarterback work.
All of it doesn’t add up to enough time. That’s not a Titans issue; that’s an NFL issue, though I’d applaud some revolutionary thinking that found some time within the limitations of the collective bargaining agreement to focus more on the basics for a player in Ward's situation.
I’ve talked to a few former NFL quarterbacks and a few NFL offensive coaches this week.
The consensus among them is that a guy like Ward needs to go through a season like this to gain an appreciation and a feel for just how important the mechanics are, and that the difference he can make with them at this point, given the limitations of practice, is really incremental.
“You can’t fix it in-season,” one said. “It will be the focus of the offseason, or needs to be.”
Another pointed out that there is no singular baseline for footwork, and so what Ward is being taught now by Mike McCoy, Nick Holz and Bo Hardegree may be different than what his new coach, coordinator and quarterback coach ask of him.
“Not everyone even agrees on what is best,” another of my insiders told me. “It can sort of be like a golf lesson. There are a lot of opinions out there and most people are full of it. The most important thing is that his footwork is tied to what his play caller wants.”
Independent of that, Quincy Avery -- whose website lists his pupils as including Jalen Hurt, Jayden Daniels, and CJ Stroud -- tweeted this on Wednesday on top of a Ward practice video. He's not impressed with the work Ward's being asked to do.
8 mins to work on fundamentals and this is where you land? https://t.co/r9nQrNF0EU
— Quincy Avery (@QuincyAvery) November 12, 2025
I didn’t expect Ward to be critical of how NFL practices work when I asked him if he wished there were more opportunities for him to work on his mechanics in the course of a week.
“There's always enough time, you’ve just got to know how to use your days,” he said.
He said some of it comes at a slower speed at this stage of the season, and he’s gotten better at repeating things mentally, counting walk-throughs that unfold earlier in the day before practice as reps and concentrating hard on little things there, too.
The work on fundamentals during individual periods seems satisfactory to him.
“Yeah, it feels like enough,” Ward said. “I get a lot of it done on my own time, and that's just really how the work week is. You've got to take advantage of the minutes that you get, then you've got to maximize just outside the building.
What does that work on his own entail?
“Just a lot of just short stepping, not over-striding, a lot of pocket movement,” he said. “I think the biggest thing is just not throwing from off-balance platforms if I don't need to, just staying in the pocket.”
It sounds great, but we haven’t really seen results.
Part of Ward’s low competition percentage (57.6, worst among qualified quarterbacks) and expected completion percentage (61.7, fourth worst) is his propensity to miss what often qualify as easy throws.
Perhaps we see an uptick there over the final eight games of his rookie year. Backup Brandon Allen has talked about elements of footwork and mechanics can arrive in a flash moment.
More likely as we wait on Ward, Ward waits on an offseason – when a new staff will likely advise Darrell Colbert Jr., Ward’s personal QB coach, on what they’d like him to do – before he can work with them at team headquarters, putting in more hours with a more intense focus on the things that will pay real dividends in the mechanics department in Year Two.
