NASHVILLE — Outside linebacker Dre’Mont Jones had a message for the Tennessee Titans and their fans on his way out of town at the NFL trade deadline this past week.
His first season with the Titans was cut short when the Music City franchise shipped Jones to the Baltimore Ravens for a conditional fifth-round pick in next year’s draft, but the seventh-year pro was in Music City long enough to form an opinion about rookie quarterback Cam Ward and his NFL future.
“Cam is the truth too y’all give ’em time, he can be great,” Jones wrote on social media.
The Titans are off this weekend, with their open date coming with nine regular-season games down and eight to go, and the team and its fans find themselves needing more patience than they have in 31 years — way back when the franchise was in Texas and known as the Houston Oilers before moving to Tennessee ahead of the 1997 season and becoming the Titans in 1999.
Like this year’s Titans, those 1994 Oilers were also going through a rebuilding project, struggling mightily during the NFL’s first season with a salary cap. This year’s Titans have won just once, matching the ’94 Oilers for the franchise’s worst nine-game start at 1-8, and they’re just one defeat away from a fourth straight losing season. They haven’t made the playoffs since securing their fourth berth in five years in 2021, when they repeated as AFC South Division champions.