Titans quarterback Cam Ward’s right shoulder injury from Week 18 of last season is feeling like a distant memory as the team progresses through its offseason program.
Head coach Robert Saleh declared Ward “perfectly healthy” on Thursday and said that the first overall pick of the 2025 draft has been “slinging the ball” at the team’s OTA workouts this week. Ward is also getting used to playing with a leaner frame after cutting 10 pounds this offseason.
“I’m trying to get a little bit leaner, and then just trying to stay durable for a long season,” Ward said, via the team’s website. “It’s really watching the calorie limit, watching the amount of protein and the amount of carbs I need to put in, and what is best for my body and how I feel. I just think [the weight loss] will help me with durability, being faster, getting up in the pocket, and then just trying to play to my speed and not no one else’s speed.”
Ward’s health allows him to get a lot of reps in the new offense that offensive coordinator Brian Daboll is installing for the 2026 season. It also means a lot of work with first-round wideout Carnell Tate on building the kind of chemistry that can help make the Titans a winning team in the near future.
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Who doesn’t like a #RevengeGame to start the season?
One such matchup will occur between the Jets and Titans, with Tennessee now employing Robert Saleh as head coach.
Saleh spent 2021-2024 as New York’s head coach before he was fired after Week 5 with a 2-3 start. Now, after a season back with the 49ers as the club’s defensive coordinator, Saleh has another chance to be a head coach with the Titans.
While it will surely be a storyline at the beginning of September, Saleh told reporters on Thursday that he’s not making very much of opening the year against his former club.
“I’ve said it before, I’m appreciative of the Jets and everything that I had,” Saleh said, via Turron Davenport of ESPN. “It’s been over a year and a half now. In the NFL, it’s kind of like 10 years.
“It’s to be expected with the NFL, but I don’t think anything of it.”
That’s at least Saleh’s public stance. We’ll see if something comes up once the players are between the white lines in September.
The Titans announced a significant addition to their front office on Wednesday.
They have hired Dave Gardi as their executive vice president of football operations. Gardi spent the last two seasons as the senior vice president of football initiatives for the Commanders and the previous 21 years in the NFL’s league office.
“We’re thrilled to have Dave join us here in Nashville,” General Manager Mike Borgonzi said in a statement. “He’s extremely respected around the NFL and brings a plethora of experience and valuable perspective, molded together by two decades at the league office, in addition to time on the club side of operations. Dave will make an immediate impact here with the Titans and we’re excited to welcome him and his family to Tennessee.”
Gardi’s hire comes after president of football operations Chad Brinker stepped down last month. The Titans’ announcement of the hire says Gardi will report directly to Borgonzi under the new structure at the top of the organization.
Nashville’s new stadium is on track to open for big events next spring, and for the Tennessee Titans to play their home games there in the 2027 season.
Titans President and CEO Burke Nihill said today that progress is continuing on schedule.
“The stadium is still scheduled to be completed some time early next spring, late winter, some time in February, likely. We are targeting probably April or so for first big events,” Nihill said.
It’s a massive job, but it’s getting closer, with the roof being built now and finishing touches put on once the roof has protected the inside from the elements.
“In terms of the construction schedule, you can see every day with 2,000 people on site, it looks a little bit more like a completed stadium,” Nihill said. “That pace will continue. The roof is being assembled right now. Likely some time in September the roof will be sealed tight. Once the roof is sealed tight, we can really get going on design finishes and things that really need to wait until it’s protected from the elements.”
One big event is already on the schedule for New Nissan Stadium: Super Bowl LXIV in 2030.
Nashville is getting a new stadium. It’s also getting a Super Bowl.
As expected, NFL owners voted on Tuesday to make Nashville the host for Super Bowl LXIV, to be played in 2030.
For most new stadiums, a Super Bowl is part of the public-money quid pro quo. Even cold-weather cities are eligible, if the venue has a roof and if the city has the infrastructure (mainly hotel space) to absorb the full experience.
The real question for Nashville will be whether the 2030 experience goes well enough to make it part of the loose rotation of Super Bowl cities. Weather will be a factor.
An ice storm in Atlanta for its second Super Bowl (XXXIV, in early 2000) kept Georgia out of the loop until it was time to reward the region for building a second dome. Nineteen years passed before the Super Bowl returned to Atlanta for a third time. (Atlanta is getting another Super Bowl, nine years after its most recent one.)
Dallas still hasn’t had another Super Bowl since the second year of Jerry World, thanks to a weeklong ice debacle and the fairly significant problem arising from selling more tickets than there were available seats.
The next four Super Bowls are now set: L.A., Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Nashville. Los Angeles and Las Vegas have become obvious regular destinations. Nashville will, in four years, have a chance to join the unofficial rotation.
Titans defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons has seen a lot of players come and go since joining the team in 2019 and one of this offseason’s departures hit him with particularly strong force.
Defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat was traded to the Jets in exchange for edge rusher Jermaine Johnson. Simmons said during an appearance on CBS Sports’ Offseason Playbook that he was caught off guard when Sweat called him with the news in March because he had taken on a mentorship role for a younger player he believed was headed for bigger things.
Simmons went on to call General Manager Mike Borgonzi for more of a download on why the team decided to go in that direction.
“It was a surprise to me,” Simmons said. “Just trying to get a feel for why. I feel like Sweat — he’s got some potential that sometimes he doesn’t understand. For me, that’s the reason why I’m like Sweat, you’re coming down to Dallas with me this offseason. I wanted to pull that out of him to be able to be like ‘I have so much potential. I can be the best nose tackle in the game of football.’ And he has the potential to do that. I hate it, but it’s a business.”
Sweat was a 2024 second-round pick in Tennessee, which meant he joined the team before Borgonzi and head coach Robert Saleh were in the organization. They determined Johnson was a better fit for where they want to go and a win-win trade would be a plus for a pair of AFC teams that haven’t been consistent winners in a long time.
A new stadium for the Titans is under construction in Nashville and it could soon become the home of Super Bowl LXIV as well.
NFL Media reports that NFL owners are expected to vote on awarding the game to Nashville at this week’s league meeting. The game would be played in 2030 and would be the first Super Bowl held in the city.
The new Nissan Stadium is expected to open in time for the 2027 season, which would give everyone several years to settle into the new digs before the Super Bowl would come to the city.
If Nashville is approved as the host for 2030, the league will have the next four Super Bowl cities lined up. The 2027 game will be in Los Angeles with Atlanta and Las Vegas on deck for 2028 and 2029.
Though they drafted quarterback Fernando Mendoza at No. 1 overall in April, the Raiders are one of five teams without a scheduled primetime game in 2026.
That’s not something new from the NFL, as the Titans didn’t have a primetime game in 2025 either after selecting quarterback Cam Ward with the first overall pick.
While the Raiders are a storied team with a nationally recognized brand, the fact that the team has won just seven games over the last two seasons is surely factoring into how attractive — or, in this case, unattractive — the club is for games in a standalone window.
In a conference call on Friday, NFL VP of broadcasting planning Mike North was asked whether or not the uncertainty of Mendoza being Las Vegas’ starting quarterback factored into the decision to keep the Raiders out of a primetime slot.
“As far as the Raiders go, I mean, nobody knows if or when Mendoza might play,” North said, via Ryan McFadden of ESPN. “It would certainly be great if we knew. We don’t. But they went out and signed a very competent veteran quarterback, and if they find themselves, you know, hovering around .500 and playoff-relevant in the middle of the season, they might be a little more reluctant to pull the trigger and move to the rookie. And if they are playoff-relevant, they will find themselves flexed into bigger national television windows, whether it’s Sunday night, Monday night, or just a bigger footprint on a Sunday afternoon.
“Not to point fingers, but I think the best comp is probably Tennessee from last year. They drafted No. 1 overall, took a quarterback who looks like he can play in this league, [and] they didn’t happen to get a national television appearance last year, either. … We don’t draft our way into primetime. We play our way into primetime.”
While head coach Klint Kubiak and the rest of the Raiders’ brass have said that they’d prefer to have a veteran start over a rookie quarterback early, Mendoza could be in the starting lineup sooner than later over veteran Kirk Cousins. We’ll see how Las Vegas’ quarterback situation plays out and whether or not the club can play its way into a flexed primetime spot as the season unfolds.
The Titans are down to one unsigned draft pick.
They announced the signing of linebacker Anthony Hill on Friday. The second-round pick agreed to a four-year contract with the team.
Hill spent the last three seasons at Texas and closed out his time in Austin with 69 tackles, seven tackles for loss, four sacks, two interceptions, three forced fumbles and a fumble recovery during the 2025 season. He was a finalist for the Butkus Award and a second-team All-American for the second year in a row.
The Titans drafted eight players in April and first-round defensive lineman Keldric Faulk is the only one who has not signed with the team.
The NFL does not expect the Jets, Cardinals, Titans, Dolphins or Raiders to be any good this season.
They are the only teams not to get a primetime game.
The Dolphins finished 7-10 last season but signaled a rebuild with several big moves in the offseason. The Jets, Titans, Raiders and Cardinals all finished 3-14 last season.
The Raiders’ exclusion from primetime is a slight surprise given the presence of No. 1 overall pick Fernando Mendoza and several big-name additions. Kirk Cousins, though, is expected to start the season for the Raiders, so there is no firm date when Mendoza will make his debut.
