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Tennessee Titans 2025 NFL Season Preview

[Editor's note: This article is from Athlon Sports' 2025 NFL Preview Magazine. Order your copy today online or pick one up at retail racks and newsstands nationwide.]

The 2025 Tennessee Titans are under new management. Player acquisition has been a major problem for the franchise since the dreadful first-round selection of Isaiah Wilson in 2020, and in many ways, the team just never recovered from COVID-19. After a major downturn in former general manager Jon Robinson’s results and a failed two-year stint from Ran Carthon, owner Amy Adams Strunk put Chad Brinker in charge of the team’s football operations, and Brinker hired Mike Borgonzi as the new general manager. As Brinker and Borgonzi have begun to rebuild a thin roster, they’ve emphasized durability and upside.

“Big, fast, tough football players who love winning more than anything else, I mean, that’s a Titan,” says Brinker. “I think over time, as you see how this unfolds, you might be able to draft them for us ahead of time because you’re going to see, ‘Oh, that looks like a Titan.’ There’s definitely a DNA we’re looking for in our players, and I think everybody wants that, but it’s hard to find. You’ve got to do a lot of work, and hopefully, those guys that we’re bringing in here will prove us right.”

And no player’s upside is more important than that of No. 1 overall pick Cam Ward, who’s been installed as the new face of the franchise and brings the hope that the Titans have found a long-term quarterback solution.

More NFL team previews

AFC East: Bills | Dolphins | Jets | Patriots

AFC North:Bengals | Browns | Ravens | Steelers

AFC South:Colts | Jaguars | Texans | Titans

AFC West: Broncos | Chargers | Chiefs | Raiders

NFC East:Commanders | Cowboys | Eagles | Giants

NFC North: Bears | Lions | Packers | Vikings

NFC South: Buccaneers | Falcons | Panthers | Saints

NFC West: 49ers | Cardinals | Rams | Seahawks

Offense

Ward’s progress will be the story of the season for the Titans, and it will tell us if head coach Brian Callahan is the quarterback guru the Titans thought he was when they hired him in 2024. Ward, the Incarnate Word, Washington State and Miami (Fla.) product, showed the Titans a solid growth curve over his college career, and they hope that all that experience will translate to the next level as it did for 2024 first-rounders Bo Nix and Michael Penix Jr.

The fear from the outside is that Ward carries, to a lesser degree, some of the negative features of incumbent Will Levis’ game — hero-ball decision-making, recklessness with the football and concerns about accuracy.

Calvin Ridley TN Titans

Calvin Ridley will be relied on to be a key target for Cam Ward.

Morgan Tencza-Imagn Images

The Titans have failed in their three first-round swings at quarterback — Vince Young, Jake Locker and Marcus Mariota — since Steve McNair was the No. 3 overall pick for the Houston Oilers in the 1995 draft. They need Ward to hit.

Before Ward’s arrival, they worked to fortify their shaky offensive line with a big free-agency deal for Pittsburgh Steelers left tackle Dan Moore Jr. and a one-year contract for right guard Kevin Zeitler. Moore’s arrival means that 2024 first-rounder JC Latham moves to right tackle, where he played at Alabama. Once Lloyd Cushenberry III is fully recovered from his midseason Achilles injury, the line will be composed of three veterans (Moore, Zeitler and Cushenberry) and two first-round picks (Peter Skoronski and Latham).

Offensive line coach Bill Callahan was viewed as a huge get for his son, but Year 1 featured overestimations of personnel. It’s an area that will be under great scrutiny and has to be significantly better.

Levis hardly had great weaponry. The Titans traded the slowing DeAndre Hopkins during the season and lost touchdown machine Nick Westbrook-Ikhine in free agency. Now, to team with Calvin Ridley, they’ve added steady but aging veteran Tyler Lockett; Van Jefferson, who’s faded since early in his career; and two intriguing draft picks — speedy fourth-rounder Chimere Dike from Florida and nicely rounded Elic Ayomanor out of Stanford, who had a very big game against No. 2 overall pick Travis Hunter.

Running back Tony Pollard was the most reliable player on the team last year, while the Titans tried to shoehorn Tyjae Spears into a co-No. 1 role. Spears excels as a pass-catcher in space, but he was consistently dinged up and didn’t do a lot to make the team want to take Pollard off the field.

The Titans sought a bigger between-the-tackles back to diversify things and came out of the draft with former linebacker Kalel Mullings of Michigan in the sixth round.

So, with a high-profile rookie quarterback, a jelling line, all those new pass-catchers and a contributing new back, what should the expectations be? The Titans are preaching patience and discipline, not just on offense. If there is progress but not enough wins, there is the danger that Adams Strunk will fire someone, as she’s done with key high-ranking football personnel during or after each of the past three seasons.

Defense

This is not a dynamic team until it shows us otherwise. The team has no headliner at edge and no pass-rusher for an offense to fear. Oluwafemi Oladejo, the Titans’ second-round pick, is yet another example. After a trade back, the team selected Oladejo 52nd overall. It’s good that they got beefier than Harold Landry III, whom they released, but Oladejo was an inside linebacker until the final 10 games of his career at UCLA and will need time to further develop his skill at chasing quarterbacks.

Titans DT Jeffery Simmons

Morgan Tencza-Imagn Images

Coordinator Dennard Wilson’s unit was secondary-centric in his first season, even as it got only five games from L’Jarius Sneed in Sneed’s first season in Tennessee. A year after trading a third-round pick to the Chiefs to acquire him, the Titans need a lot more than they got from a guy with a bad knee who dealt with a quad injury in 2024 and also got involved in an off-the-field incident.

The team’s offseason hole-patching included edges Dre’Mont Jones and Lorenzo Carter, safety Xavier Woods and linebacker Cody Barton, who is more instinctive than Kenneth Murray Jr. The Titans need improve their red-zone defense, which tied for 25th by allowing TDs nearly two-thirds of the time. They also need to force more turnovers, a category in which they ranked in the middle of the league.

Tackle Jeffery Simmons said early on last season that “no one runs against the Titans,” but then the team wound up yielding 133.9 rushing yards per game (26th), an effort that hardly allowed the team to set the tone it wanted. Simmons and T’Vondre Sweat need to be the interior forces that the team expects, and they need the help to arrive behind them in a timely fashion. Wilson’s unit seemingly still lacks the personnel he needs to rush the passer effectively and force the issue.

Specialists

The Titans were disastrous on special teams in Brian Callahan’s first season. He hired a special teams coordinator in Colt Anderson with insufficient experience, and then it seemed as if Carthon didn’t give consideration to special teams’ qualities when filling the final spots on the roster.

Anderson is gone, and John “Bones” Fassel is replacing him. A veteran special teams coach and a GM who’s likely to work with him on what he needs should yield far better results. They’ve chosen placement over distance with Johnny Hekker at punter rather than Ryan Stonehouse. Placekicker Joey Slye has questionable accuracy but certainly possesses a bigger leg than Nick Folk did.

Final Analysis

A Titans team lacking blue-chip talent is built on youth, increased speed, better sturdiness and a whole lot of hope. The Titans may have a chance to pick up a few extra wins against a schedule that includes two games apiece vs. the new-regime Jaguars and the stuck-in-neutral Colts in the AFC South, as well as contests against the rebuilding Browns, Saints and Patriots. The primary goal for the franchise this season is to see some hope and progress at the quarterback position.