Tennessee is 0-4 and Cam Ward is not the reason. The run game is.
Baltimore won 24-18 at home, moved to 3-1, and pushed the Titans to 0-4, and the box score reads like a team that got competent quarterback play and almost nothing else. Ward went 20 of 31 for 222 yards, one touchdown, one interception and an 83.0 rating. He took one sack for 10 yards. His leading receiver, Carnell Tate, caught 9 of 12 targets for 145 yards, a 16.1 average and a long of 33.
That's a functional passing offense. What surrounds it is not.
Tate also fumbled twice and lost one. Everything else in the receiving column is scraps. Calvin Ridley caught one of two targets for 13 yards. Elic Ayomanor: one for 22. Chimere Dike: one for 15. Wan'Dale Robinson turned three catches into 19 yards and the Titans' only receiving touchdown. Tony Pollard was targeted four times and caught two for two yards. Tyjae Spears caught one for minus-one. Ward threw for 222 yards and exactly one pass went to a receiver for more than 19.
The ground game is worse. Pollard carried 16 times for 48 yards, 3.0 a pop, with a long of 7 and the Titans' rushing touchdown. Nicholas Singleton gained two yards on three carries. Spears gained seven on two. That's the entire backfield, and the best run of the day belonged to Ward, whose four carries went for 27 yards with a 22-yarder.
Tyler Loop's 40-yard field goal at 3:24 of the fourth went wide left, and the Ravens took their second timeout at 1:12 before the clock ran out on a six-point game. Credit Tennessee's special teams for keeping it that close: Dike returned four kickoffs for 126 yards, a 31.5 average with a long of 40, plus two punts for 15. Cody Barton made eight tackles, four of them solo. The Titans got field position and stops and still needed a kicker to bail them out at the end.
Baltimore's side of the ledger is thin on numbers, which is its own signal. The listed passing leaders are Lamar Jackson and Tyler Huntley. The listed rushing leaders are Derrick Henry, Jackson and Huntley. Three ball-carriers plus a second quarterback in the passing column points to a game the Ravens won by committee rather than by one big afternoon.
Here's the read, and it's the one that matters for both teams. Tennessee should stop treating this as a quarterback problem. Ward is completing passes at a rate and an average that win games, and the Titans have turned it into 18 points and a zero in the win column because they cannot run the ball and cannot keep the one receiver who produces from putting it on the turf. Fix the run game, or the same 222-yard, one-touchdown day shows up again next week with the same result.
And Baltimore's 3-1 is softer than it looks. A team that needs a timeout at 1:12 to close out a winless opponent in a six-point home game is not a team that has solved anything yet. I'll take the Ravens' record as a placeholder until they beat someone who isn't 0-4.
