2025 NFL draft team grades | NFL draft takeaways | Round 1 grades | Rounds 2-3 grades | 2026 QB prospect preview
It was the last week of February in Indianapolis and Tennessee Titans coach Brian Callahan already had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen two months later when his team would pull the proverbial magnet off the board and call in the first pick of the 2025 NFL draft.
Still, he was reserving the right to change his mind, and this was going to be one of the moments where it might happen—the first in which he’d challenge Cam Ward.
In the weeks leading up to that night in a Lucas Oil Stadium suite, he’d studied every snap of Ward’s single season at Miami, the second of his two seasons at Washington State, and a smattering of plays and sequences from his first season at Wazzu and his two at Incarnate Word in San Antonio. He’d called around, and he’d talked it over with new GM Mike Borgonzi and the personnel staff. The time had come to make Ward squirm.
“You don’t draft me,” Ward told the room, “and you’re gonna pay for it.”
“Hey, man, everybody says that,” Callahan responded. “That’s the dumbest s— I’ve ever heard. Every quarterback in the world says that now, because Tom Brady said it way back in the day.”
The coach then paused.
“Do you mean that?” Callahan continued. “Is that really ?”
“I mean it,” Ward responded. “And I stand on it.”
“O.K.,” Callahan said. “Good. At least you’re not full of s—.”
Ward is now officially a Titan.
On Thursday, just after 7 p.m. Nashville time, Borgonzi picked up that phone, dialed Ward’s number, and tied the job security of so many in the room to the quarterback on the other end of the line. These decisions are that big—you take a player at that position that high, and it’s a bet of the highest order for an NFL coach or executive.
And it was a series of moments such as the one laid out above that erased any doubt that might’ve lingered on it being the right one as February turned to March, and then April.
The Titans got their guy.
