Everyone is excited to see the Tennessee Titans play this season for obvious reasons. At the top of the list is the top pick from the draft, Cam Ward. Did the AFC just get ANOTHER star QB? How about Brian Callahan in his second year. Can the guy coach? And with a new regime in the front office changing the Titans team-building technique significantly, the overarching question hanging over everybody’s head: is this team going to finally trend upwards again after 3 seasons in the desert?
If the answer to that question is yes—which, for the sake of a lot of people’s employment, it better be—then what exactly does that look like? Will the Titans be more like the 2024 Commanders, or the 2024 Bears? Those are two very different ways to “trend up”. We need these expectations appropriately set.
Well, Titans starting right tackle JC Latham went on the “Bussin’ With The Boys” podcast last week, and host (and Titans legend) Taylor Lewan asked him this very question. “What should the expectation be for Titans fans who are watching this right now? Fired up?”
Latham gave a thought-out answer that didn’t mince words. “Yeah, everything that we are doing right now is pushed to be the best. It’s not that we want to win just a couple more games, it's none of that” he said.
Everybody in the Titans building is singularly focused on getting better RIGHT NOW, not just by the time August rolls around. “I talked to my people about the areas that I needed to fix and the areas that, as a team, we needed to fix. And, you know, we, I've addressed my areas and the team addressed our team areas. And it's like, we're trying to establish our culture here and our identity and who we are as a team.”
Brian Callahan and his coaches spent a long time in the winter devising what is perhaps the most detailed offseason program in the league. You can read more about what it entails, but that’s what Latham is talking about here. Everything everybody does in practice this summer is being painstakingly graded and scored in a complex competition across the roster.
“We sat down and went through everything as far as, you know, what it means to be a Tennessee Titan, what it means to be here, what it means to the fans, what it means to everybody, you know? So it wasn't just like a on-the-field thing. It was like everybody being connected with the community and everybody. So we’re pushing ourselves to be the best versions of ourselves, to be excellent. That's exactly what we're striving to be.”
So if you’re a Titans fan wondering how excited you can be for 2025, and what a reasonable expectation is… the bar the Titans are holding themselves to is excellence. Do with that information what you will.
