Robert Saleh's goal is for his starters to "get through the first half" of the Tennessee Titans' preseason finale against the Chicago Bears on Aug. 29 (5 p.m., WKRN-2)
The question, of course, is why.
Time and time again, Saleh and his players have talked about how peculiar preseason games are. It's not that they don't matter. It's just that winning them isn't a priority. Saleh's Titans don't gameplan for preseason games. They deliberately run vanilla offensive and defensive schemes that don't correspond to what they'll run in the regular season. They admittedly put more focus on playing well in joint practices, which players say feel more like "real games" than preseason competitions do. And in the preseason games, it's almost always the Titans starters
going against opposing backups and third-stringers.
So, again, why?
"We're a very, very, young football team and we need as many reps as we can possibly get," Saleh said. "What you see today is our floor. This team is only going to get better, but the only way they're going to be better is if they see it, and they've got to see it a million times over if we want to accelerate the learning curve."
"We continue to get our timing down," added QB Cam Ward. "We continue to get reps on Mike points, on protections, whether I need to flip protections, whether I need to reverse the call or make a whole new play call for myself if I want to check to something. It’s real game reps. That’s the beauty of it."
Following the Titans' joint practice against the Chicago Bears on Aug. 27, Ward conceded that he and his teammates have played better in the joint practice sessions against opposing starters than in preseason games against opposing backups. Case in point: While Ward is 13-for-24 passing in two preseason starts, he's 39-for-56 in his last two joint practice outings. That's a difference between a 54% completion percentage and a 70% completion percentage, with the big difference being the bigger number came against the actual starters.
It's paradoxical, in a sense. Ward has thrown five touchdowns in two practices against defenses that won playoff games a year ago but he hasn't thrown a touchdown in six series against a bunch of guys competing for spots on NFL rosters.
"I just think more of the practice we’re doing more game stuff that we would do in a real football game," Ward says. "It’s a lot of stuff that we don’t want to put on tape to show in the preseason game that doesn’t matter. It’s more of getting better at the stuff we know we’re going to do in Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3."
Ward's one of only two starting quarterbacks in the NFL who ranks among the top 50 this preseason in pass attempts. The other is Cleveland's Deshaun Watson, who had to win his job with preseason performances. The way the Titans are handling their starters is hardly conventional, but Saleh remains convicted in it.
"You just want to see them work their technique, their fundamentals, their get-off, the cadence, the operation. Going through a two-minute drive, going to the red zone, going into the show yardage, getting all the different stuff. All that stuff matters. And you just want them to be exposed to football. And once we get to game planning, we'll game plan."
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X @nicksuss. Subscribe to the Talkin’ Titans newsletter for updates sent directly to your inbox.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why do Titans insist on playing starters in preseason? Robert Saleh's, Cam Ward's answer
