Tennessee

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Ward suffered an AC joint sprain in his right, throwing shoulder late in the year. Ward has been doing “lower-body work” and is expected to resume throwing the football in March, roughly two-to-three weeks from now. Titans coaches are reportedly focused on correcting “some of the bad habits” Ward picked up last year by improving his “base.” We should have another update on Ward’s recovery in the next couple of weeks.

Smart’s hiring reunites him with Titans head coach Robert Saleh. The two spent three seasons together with the Jets from 2021-2023. Smart won over Hard Knocks viewers in his final NFL season, vying for a roster spot during the Jets’ 2023 training camp. He entered the NFL’s coaching ranks last season, signing on as a defensive quality control assistant with the Cowboys.

Daboll praised both Ward’s athleticism and accuracy when discussing the second-year passer. Ward occasionally flashed big-play potential as a rookie, but he spent most of his debut campaign missing passes and taking sacks. Defenses took him down behind the line of scrimmage a league-high 55 times. He completed just shy of 60 percent of his passes. Daboll has had success with young quarterbacks in the past. He coaxed a playoff berth out of Daniel Jones in 2022 and oversaw a handful of solid performances from Jaxson Dart in 2025 before the Giants canned him. Daboll has a tall order ahead of him, but quarterback has become a late-bloomer position in recent years, with Caleb Williams serving as the poster child for a post-rookie rebound. Titans fans will be hoping for a similar turnaround from Ward.

Coming off a 2025 season in which he caught 47 passes for 1,003 yards and six touchdowns as the Colts’ de facto WR1, Pierce is expected to be a popular name in free agency among wideout-needy teams. ESPN’s Ryan McFadden said last week that the Raiders would also pursue Pierce in free agency. “Pierce has the vertical stretch ability to produce down the field and can play a volume role as a multilevel target for quarterback Cam Ward,” Bowen said. In Tennessee, Pierce would instantly become the team’s No. 1 receiver, though it’s hard to say if Ward would be an upgrade over the quarterbacks Pierce had in Indianapolis last season. Ward in 2025 was 21st out of 35 qualifying QBs in accuracy on downfield throws. His 9.6 percent downfield passing rate was among the lowest in the league.

According to Davenport, Ward has “been working mostly on footwork” this offseason. The No. 1overall pick of the 2025 NFL Draft is hoping to rebound from a challenging rookie season and will have a new offensive coordinator in place in Brian Daboll. Ward suffered his shoulder injury in the final week of the season, but exams revealed it was a sprained AC join that would not require surgery. Ward and the Titans have a lot to improve on in 2026 after the offense finished 30th in scoring and 31st in total yards. Hopefully a healthy offseason will lead to some growth for the second-year signal-caller.

Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi is Dave’s brother. The latter Borgonzi previously coached linebackers with the Cowboys (2025), Bears (2022-2024) and Colts (2018-2021). He held offensive and defensive assistant roles with the Cowboys and served as a defensive quality control coach with the Buccaneers before that.

It’s quite the downgrade for Callahan after failing in his lone season at the helm in Tennessee. Callahan will now work with second-year QB Jaxson Dart to develop his game following a promising rookie season in which he threw for 15 touchdowns and five interceptions over 14 games, while rushing for another nine scores. Hopefully Callahan’s total inability to develop Cam Ward in Tennessee isn’t a harbinger of things to come for Dart and the Giants.

NFL insider Jordan Schultz was first with the report. Bradley and new Titans head coach Robert Saleh both joined the 49ers last offseason and will now unite in Tennessee. Bradley served as a defensive coordinator from 2017 to 2024, overseeing operations for the Chargers, Raiders, and Colts over that span. A respected, veteran coach, Bradley, will not be tasked with play-calling duties, but will be a highly-valued voice in the room of a defense that finished 28th in points allowed and 21st in yards allowed last season.

The 49ers hired Raheem Morris as their new defensive coordinator earlier today, removing one high-profile candidate. Breer notes that either the Titans or Cardinals could hire Bradley as their next defensive coordinator, though the Cardinals’ ability to let Bradley call plays on defense gives them an “edge” over the Titans. He also notes that if the Titans miss out on Bradley, Falcons defensive pass-game coordinator Mike Rutenberg is “a name to watch.”

Davenport points out that Brian Daboll ran RPOs on 12.6 percent of their plays last year, fourth-most in the league, and notes that Ward had a lot of success running them in college at Miami. We don’t know that Ward is an upper-tier NFL athlete in space, but every bit of rushing production could help him for fantasy football purposes. Perhaps being in a scheme he’s more familiar with could help as well. Ward, who sprained his AC joint in the Titans’ Week 18 loss to Jacksonville, does not currently have a timetable to return to the field but Titans GM Mike Borgonzi said he was “doing well.”