Pats Pulpit
Fresh off their third win in a row, the New England Patriots will travel to Tennessee to take on their head coach’s former team. Mike Vrabel meeting the Titans for the first time since his departure during the 2024 offseason is one of the big stories of the week. So is his ex-club firing his successor just earlier this week.
So, what can be expected of the Titans now? In order to answer that and other questions about the team, we reached out to Jimmy Morris of Pats Pulpit’s sister site Music City Miracles, the SB Nation community for all things Titans.
Here is what he told us about the upcoming game and what to expect from New England’s Week 7 opponent.
1. Did Brian Callahan deserve to be fired this early into the season? How do you expect Mike McCoy to change things up as interim head coach?
Yeah, he did. It’s been that bad. Not only did he have numerous in-game gaffes, but the offense has been one of the worst units I’ve ever seen. Callahan was brought in because of his ability to coach offense. They are 31st or 32nd in pretty much every offensive category you can think of. Plus, there is the fact that Cam Ward has regressed over the last few weeks outside of a really good fourth quarter against the Arizona Cardinals. The team was bad and getting worse.
That’s a good question. Our hope is that they will play with more tempo on offense. That is where Ward is at his best. Callahan talked about doing more of it after the Cardinals game, but then they came out and only went no huddle three times before the game was over in the fourth quarter last week.
2. The numbers aren’t great, but how has Cam Ward performed on an individual level thus far? How much is he raising the offense’s ceiling?
He was good in the first two games despite having bad numbers. Things haven’t gone as well since, except for, like I said earlier, the fourth quarter against the Cardinals. Now, there are some pretty obvious reasons he is struggling. One is that they have no playmakers on offense — especially with Calvin Ridley out. There is also the fact that the offensive line has been bad. Ward has already been sacked 25 times this season. He has gotten into the bad habit of drifiting in the pocket, even when it is clean. It’s hard to blame him with how much he has been hit, but he has to get that fixed if he is going to have success. He also has some issues with his footwork, but again, some of that stems from running for his life on most plays.
He hasn’t really raised the offensive sealing yet, but there is a really good quarterback in there. It’s going to take some time and players around him, but I am still confident that the Titans have their guy going forward....
