Tennessee Titans Open Saleh-Era Training Camp With Cam Ward in the Spotlight

The waiting is basically over. Rookies report to Vanderbilt Health Football Center on Thursday, July 23, veterans follow on July 28, and the Robert Saleh era in Nashville finally moves from whiteboards to grass. This past week of Tennessee Titans news was all about the runway to camp: the 90-man roster took its final pre-camp shape, free training camp tickets went live on July 15 and started disappearing, Peter Skoronski picked up some league-wide recognition that will cost the front office real money, and Cam Ward became must-watch television before taking a single snap of year two. For a team coming off 3-14, there is a strange amount of optimism floating around Middle Tennessee right now, and it is not entirely unearned.

The week in Tennessee Titans news

Start with the calendar, because the team made it official well before this week and fans acted on it now: eight practices will be open to the public, beginning Saturday, August 1, with seven at the team facility and one big one at Nissan Stadium. Tickets are free and became available July 15 on a first-come, first-served basis. The headliner is the August 7 Blue and White scrimmage, which the team is billing as the final chance for fans to watch a practice at the current Nissan Stadium before the franchise moves into its new building. Gates at 5 p.m., practice at 6:30, fireworks after. If you have any sentimentality about the old place, that is the night to use it.

The more football-relevant development was Peter Skoronski landing ninth among guards and centers in ESPN's annual poll of league executives, coaches and scouts, published this past week. One exec's summary, as relayed by A to Z Sports: "He's going to get paid a lot more money." Skoronski is extension-eligible, he just made his case on a national platform, and the Titans have to decide whether to pay him now or pay him more later. Given what interior linemen are getting on the open market, waiting rarely gets cheaper.

And then there is the television arc. Netflix's "Quarterback" returned with Cam Ward as one of its featured players, and clips from the series bounced around Titans corners of the internet all week — including a hot-mic moment of Ward promising "I ain't gonna take a sack" and some genuinely endearing footage involving his parents. None of it changes his completion percentage, but it tells you where the league thinks this story is headed. Netflix does not build a season around a quarterback from a 3-14 team by accident.

How the Titans got here

A quick rewind, because the context makes this camp make sense. The 2025 season was a full-scale failure: 3-14, with head coach Brian Callahan fired on October 13 after a 1-5 start and interim coach Mike McCoy going 2-9 the rest of the way. It was the second straight 3-14 finish, which is the kind of sentence that gets everyone's office cleaned out.

The response was a genuine reset. Tennessee hired Robert Saleh as head coach on January 22, then landed Brian Daboll as offensive coordinator five days later — a defensive-minded head coach paired with a play-caller who has a real track record developing young quarterbacks. General manager Mike Borgonzi then spent June making the biggest internal statement of the offseason, signing Jeffery Simmons to a three-year, $105.8 million extension with $100 million guaranteed, briefly making him the highest-paid defensive tackle in league history. Simmons earned it the old-fashioned way: a franchise-record 11 sacks for a defensive tackle, 17 tackles for loss, and first-team All-Pro honors in an otherwise miserable season. "Jeffery Simmons is a pillar for our franchise," Borgonzi said at the time. Hard to argue.

An offseason of real spending

The roster around Ward and Simmons got a substantial makeover, and it is worth cataloging because most of these names will define camp:

• Wan'Dale Robinson, WR — four years, $78 million. Coming off a 1,014-yard season and already fluent in Daboll's offense from their Giants overlap.
• John Franklin-Myers, DL — three years, $63 million, reuniting with Saleh to line up next to Simmons.
• Alontae Taylor and Cor'Dale Flott, CBs — three-year deals worth $60 million and $45 million, a near-total rebuild of the cornerback room, with Kansas City's Joshua Williams added for depth.
• Mitchell Trubisky, QB — two years, another Daboll reunion, brought in to be the adult in the quarterback room.
• Specialists — punter Tommy Townsend and kicker Joey Slye, with longtime punter Johnny Hekker released after six seasons.

The bold swing was the trade: T'Vondre Sweat shipped to the Jets with edge rusher Jermaine Johnson II coming back, a bet that Saleh can get Johnson back to his 2023 form. Tight end Chig Okonkwo left for Washington. Then the draft doubled down on the youth movement — Ohio State wideout Carnell Tate at No. 4 overall, Auburn edge Keldric Faulk at No. 31, and Texas linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. at No. 60, with Penn State running back Nicholas Singleton and Arkansas guard Fernando Carmona arriving on day three.

The camp battles that matter

Sports Illustrated's pre-camp breakdown of the full 90-man roster, published this past week, pointed at three unsettled areas, and the offensive line is the loudest. Left tackle Dan Moore Jr., left guard Skoronski and right tackle JC Latham are locked in. The other two spots are open auditions: Austin Schlottmann reportedly enters camp with the edge at center over Jackson Slater after a strong offseason, while Cordell Volson leads at right guard on experience — with rookie Carmona lurking as the upside play. The swing tackle job behind Moore and Latham is genuinely up for grabs, and the team site has hinted another lineman could still be added to that mix.

Receiver is the other squeeze. Robinson, Tate, Calvin Ridley, Elic Ayomanor and Chimere Dike give Tennessee five locks, which leaves local favorite Xavier Restrepo and a crowd of camp bodies fighting for one or two spots. Ridley's role is its own subplot — he is still here despite a rough 2025, and how Daboll deploys him will say a lot about how much patience remains.

Then there is the awkward one: Will Levis. Four quarterbacks are on the roster — Ward, Trubisky, Levis and Hendon Hooker — and that math does not survive cutdown day. Levis had an uneven spring by most accounts, trade speculation has followed him since December, and camp is effectively his showcase window, whether for Tennessee or for somebody else.

Cam Ward, year two

Everything else is set dressing. The Titans' 2026 season rises or falls on whether Ward makes the leap, and the encouraging part is that his rookie season trended the right way — the team's own review noted his completion percentage and touchdowns climbed late in the year while the interceptions dropped. The concerns are just as specific: NFL.com's camp preview flagged his accuracy on short and intermediate throws and his processing against man coverage as the things Daboll has to fix. That is why the Robinson signing matters so much — a high-volume slot receiver is a young quarterback's best friend — and why Tate at No. 4 was a swing at giving Ward a true outside alpha for the next decade. New quarterbacks coach Shea Tierney completes the Daboll support system. Year two is when the excuses run out and the fun is supposed to start.

What's next on the calendar

The next six weeks of Tennessee Titans football, in order:

• July 23 — rookies report to camp; veterans follow July 28
• August 1 — first practice open to fans
• August 7 — Blue and White scrimmage, the final practice event at the current Nissan Stadium
• August 11-13 — joint practice and preseason opener at the 49ers in Santa Clara
• August 21-23 and 27-29 — joint practices and preseason games against the Seahawks and Bears, both in Nashville
• September 13 — regular-season opener vs. the Jets at Nissan Stadium, noon CT

So that is where the Tennessee Titans stand this week: a new coach, a new offense, a paid-up superstar in the middle of the defense, and a second-year quarterback with a camera crew already following him around. The roster is deeper than it has been in years and the schedule opens at home against the team that took Sweat off their hands. Nobody should pencil this group into January just yet — but for the first time in two years, the interesting questions in Nashville are about ceilings instead of floors. Camp opens Thursday. Bring sunscreen.