Cam Ward has many, many NFL games in his future.
But the Tennessee Titans' No. 1 overall pick could not have had a much worse debut than he did on Sunday against the Denver Broncos.
The traditional stats don't look good at all: 12-for-28 for 112 yards with six sacks taken.
But the advanced stats? Historically bad.
Ward was the 38th rookie to start in Week 1 since 2000. He ranks 37th out of 38 in the advanced state called Expected Points Added per pass play.
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The EPA stat assigns a value to every play's outcome based on whether a given moment added or subtracted from a team's likelihood to score on a possession.
Ward had a -0.41 EPA per pass play on Sunday, according to The Athletic's Mike Sando.
The only QB worse than that since 2000? Brandon Weeden.
Weeden famously was 28 years old when the Browns made him a first-round pick, and he was an instant nightmare.
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Ward's expectations are a lot higher than Weeden's, but that's not the company a QB wants to be keeping.
It didn't help that Denver has an awesome defense that performed as advertised.
But the Titans will definitely hope that Ward learns from this and gets better, because it was definitely rough.
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