Tennessee Titans Start-Sit: Week 18 Fantasy Advice for Cameron Ward, Tony Pollard, Chimere Dike, and Others
The fantasy football landscape shifts each week, bringing fresh opportunities and unexpected challenges that separate the prepared from the pretenders. Savvy managers know that last week’s performance tells only part of the story, and diving deeper into the underlying metrics reveals the accurate picture.
This week presents some intriguing decisions. Here’s insight about key Tennessee Titans players heading into their matchup with the Jacksonville Jaguars to help you craft a winning lineup.
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Cameron Ward, QB
Cam Ward has four straight games with multiple touchdown passes (zero such games prior), and the Titans allowed him to cut it loose a bit last week (9.3-yard aDOT, his highest mark since Week 5).
Much like Shedeur Sanders in Cleveland, this is a larger conversation for fantasy purposes. Ward isn’t yet ready to be a fantasy asset by himself, and the roster around him isn’t close to viable. He isn’t willing to run, and that’s going to slow down his ability to appeal to us in a meaningful way.
I think what he has shown is more encouraging than his raw numbers suggest, but we are still more than a year away from him being on redraft radars.
Tony Pollard, RB
Tony Pollard has another year left on his deal, and that lines him up to be exactly what he was this draft season: a boring click that you make based on volume and volume alone.
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I’d think that if they wanted to extend Tyjae Spears (seven touches on 38 snaps last week) over Pollard, we’d have seen it by now, so I’ll enter 2026 expecting something like a 70/30 split of the work, and that’s enough to have Pollard live up to his ADP.
Pollard’s 2026 upside doesn’t rest on him; it’s a Cam Ward thing. If he can level up in a major way, it adds value to everyone attached and opens up the running game as defenses back off the line of scrimmage.
I’m not sure that Ward explodes in a way that allows Pollard to produce at a top-15 level, but I’d bet on him taking at least a small step forward, and we saw down the stretch this season that even marginal gains in that regard stand to benefit the running game.
Tyjae Spears, RB
Tyjae Spears has passed the eye test at various points this season, but Sunday wasn’t one of them (seven touches for one yard against the Saints). With a year left on Tony Pollard’s contract, it’s difficult to pencil him in as a meaningful piece for fantasy purposes in 2026.
The Titans have trusted him with double-digit carries just once this season, and while he’s been active in the pass game, there’s only been one instance in which he’s reached 40 yards.
It feels like he is the running back of the Cam Ward era, and that could pay dividends for dynasty managers, but it’d take a lot of change for me to view him as anything more than roster depth next season.
Chimere Dike, WR
Chimere Dike broke Tim Brown’s rookie record for all-purpose yards last week, and while his role on special teams means more to that mark than his value in our game, the fourth-round pick certainly showed enough upside this year to have my interest as a developmental piece next to Cam Ward.
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The Titans made him a full-time player for the second half of this season, and he’s rewarded them with 10+ PPR points in three of his past four and three games of 16+ points this season.
There’s natural risk: he’s run 381 routes this season and earned four end zone targets. A bet on Dike is a bet on Ward: if you think the Year 2 leap is real, Dike could be a top-40 receiver as the top option in this offense, but if Ward’s gains are only marginal, you’re going to run into scoring equity issues that have his WR1 as more of a DFS flier than a realistic weekly redraft option.
Chig Okonkwo, TE
The Chig Okonkwo situation is a funny one. We see just enough of him to make him interesting (the 43-yard TD last week against the Saints was a grown man play that only a handful of tight ends are capable of making), but he’s been stuck in that 50-60 range with almost no TD equity for three consecutive seasons now.
I want him to stay in Tennessee.
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That may sound counterintuitive (UFA this summer). But I want him to develop alongside Cam Ward rather than trying to fit into an offense that is already structured a certain way (going to Tampa Bay or something like that wouldn’t move the needle for me).
Keep tabs. This is a strong athlete who can make plays in a variety of ways. His aDOT has dipped every season, and with his YAC skills, I think that is probably the best way for him to work his way into the top 15 conversation.
I don’t currently have him ranked as such, but it’s not hard to imagine Ward improving exponentially. If that happens, in an offense that lacks proven talent, Okonkwo would likely come along for the ride.
