NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Titans are in no mood to make any predictions as training camp starts Wednesday with a new coach in Robert Saleh and general manager Mike Borgonzi in his second year following another big free agent spending spree.
The goal couldn't be more clear for the NFL franchise trying to snap a skid of four straight losing seasons.
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Tennessee Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp, Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tennessee Titans head coach Robert Saleh speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp, Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tennessee Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi, left, and head coach Robert Saleh, right, respond to questions during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tennessee Titans head coach Robert Saleh speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp, Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tennessee Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp, Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
“There’s always urgency, really, every year to win in this league," Borgonzi said Tuesday. “I feel good about the pieces that we have here now, the players, obviously Coach Saleh coming in and his staff. I mean the urgency in this league, it’s so competitive. So yeah, we feel the urgency.”
Borgonzi drafted a promising class of rookies in 2025 led by quarterback Cam Ward at No. 1 overall with the Titans following up with a miserable 3-14 season highlighted by the firing of coach Brian Callahan.
Saleh, hired in January, brought in an experienced coaching staff featuring two other former NFL head coaches in offensive coordinator Brian Daboll and defensive coordinator Gus Bradley.
Needing more talent, Borgonzi made the Titans the NFL's highest-spending team in free agency in March by signing wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson and a trio of cornerbacks led by Alontae Taylor and Cor'Dale Flott. He then added a draft class in April led by receiver Carnell Tate and defensive lineman Keldric Faulk.
The Titans have three joint practices before preseason games with San Francisco, defending champ Seattle and Chicago — all playoff teams in January. The Titans open the season Sept. 13 against the New York Jets, the team that fired Saleh in 2024.
Saleh said yes, the Titans play in a good division in the AFC South. Both Jacksonville and Houston reached the playoffs last season.
“The only chance you have at being successful in this league is if you have a great process, you win day to day and you put yourself in position to be as good as you can be on game day," Saleh said. "That’s really the main focus for our football team.”
Only right tackle JC Latham will remain on the physically unable to perform list with a strained pectoral muscle. Borgonzi said safety Amani Hooker would be activated later Tuesday.
Saleh made very clear that Ward is the Titans' starter. So the only quarterback competition is for who backs up Ward between veteran Mitch Trubisky, Will Levis and Hendon Hooker.
Trubisky has familiarity with offensive coordinator Brian Daboll. Levis is in the final year of his rookie deal as the 33rd overall draft pick in 2023. He has started 21 games, but Levis spent last season recovering from shoulder surgery.
“As far as the quarterback’s concerned, we’re going to do everything we can to develop Cam,” Saleh said.
The Titans took care of an extension for All-Pro defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons in June. Borgonzi said they have had talks with agents for left guard Peter Skoronski, who is going into the fourth year of his rookie contract.
The Titans picked up his fifth-year option, but the 11th pick overall in the 2023 draft has started all 48 games s played as a key piece of the offensive line.
Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk joined nephew and board co-chair Kenneth Adams IV along with Borgonzi, Saleh, president and CEO Burke Nihill and other team executives dumping ice water over their heads to help raise money and awareness of the disease two former players for the franchise are fighting.
Chris Johnson, the sixth man to run for at least 2,000 yards in an NFL season, announced in June that he has ALS. He also restarted the fundraising for research into the disease former Titans linebacker Tim Shaw was diagnosed with in 2014.
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Tennessee Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp, Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tennessee Titans head coach Robert Saleh speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp, Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tennessee Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi, left, and head coach Robert Saleh, right, respond to questions during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tennessee Titans head coach Robert Saleh speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp, Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tennessee Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi speaks during a news conference at the NFL football team's training camp, Tuesday, July 28, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
A judge on Tuesday sentenced a teenager who killed two students and two teachers in a shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia to serve life in prison without the possibility of parole, calling his crimes “deliberate, contemplated evil.”
Colt Gray, 16, had pleaded guilty Friday to 55 counts, including murder, in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.
Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm handed down the sentence after hearing from family members of those killed and victims, as well as investigators, Gray’s grandmother and a forensic psychologist who had evaluated Gray.
Murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison in Georgia, so the only decision Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm had to make was whether Gray should ever be eligible for parole. He decided the teen should never be allowed out.
“You do not seem to be tormented by what you did. You seem to relish following in the footsteps of the murderers you idolize. You aren’t wracked with guilt. You’re proud of yourself," Primm said.
“We’ve seen no evidence he has any ability to develop a conscience or any ability ever to fully value human life,” District Attorney Brad Smith had said during his closing argument, insisting that Gray “cannot be in society.”
Defense attorney W. Charlton Allen told the judge his client was “not irretrievably broken.” Allowing him the possibility of parole would give him “an opportunity of hope," Allen said, adding that a lack of hope “takes away the ability for him to change.”
“This is not a happy day. This is a relief day, I would say,” Smith told reporters after the sentencing, adding that he hoped his team had “done honor” to the victims and their loved ones.
Teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting. Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire.
Victims of the shooting and family members of those killed conveyed their anger and grief to Primm on Friday, almost all of them asking him not to allow the possibility of parole.
Shayna Aspinwall, the wife of math teacher and football coach Richard Aspinwall, described “a life sentence of grief and trauma for those left behind.”
Investigators testified during the three-day sentencing hearing that Gray idolized mass shooters, talking about them online with other members of the “true crime community,” a group of young people online who are fascinated with such attacks. Gray had chatted online about gaining notoriety through a school shooting.
Prosecutors played recordings of phone conversations Gray had with his mother, Marcee Gray, from a youth detention center in the months after the shooting. During those calls, he directed his mother to look up what people were saying about him online. He was excited when she described “fan art” drawings depicting him or comments people made about him and the attention he was getting online.
Gray had the “mental wherewithal” to mimic details of other mass killings on the day of the shooting, Smith said. He placed those “Easter eggs,” anticipating that they would be mentioned in court one day and would perpetuate his fame, the prosecutor said.
“The shooting was not the culmination of the plan. The shooting was just one of the steps of the plan. The plan was ultimate and lifelong fame inside of the TCC,” Smith said, referencing the “true crime community.”
“Colt got less stability than he needed, which made him even more vulnerable,” Allen, the defense attorney, argued. He said his client got wrapped up in an online community where he found the acceptance he craved but wasn’t getting at home.
Gray’s maternal grandmother, Debbie Polhamus, testified that the teen had a troubled childhood and that his parents failed him. Her grandson had grown “highly agitated and aggressive” in the weeks before the shooting, she said, adding that she had urged his parents to get him some help but they didn’t follow through.
“I tried to help Colt because nobody else was helping him,” she said.
Polhamus said she visits her grandson once a week at a youth detention center and that he has improved enormously with treatment and medication. She said her grandson has been doing a lot of reading and wants to study to get a GED diploma.
“I’d like to see him have a chance at some point to prove himself,” Polhamus said.
Gray was put in foster care while in detention because his father was in prison and there were concerns about his mother's contact with him. Candice Broce, director of the state Division of Family & Children Services and commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Services, managed his case.
Broce testified that Gray appeared to show improvement. After Marcee Gray was barred from speaking with her son by a July 2025 no-contact order and he started taking medication, staff at the youth detention center told Broce it “changed him essentially into a different child,” she said.
The judge acknowledged that Gray had been failed by his parents, his extended family and, to a certain extent, society.
“But that failure does not absolve you from who you chose to idolize, worship and become,” Primm told Gray.
Judge Nicholas Primm speaks during Apalachee High School shooting suspect Colt Gray's sentencing hearing at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old convicted in the Apalachee High School shooting, stands to be handcuffed following his sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., on Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray reacts during his sentencing hearing at Barrow County Superior Court in Winder, Ga., Tuesday, July 28, 2026. (Arvin Temkar/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Ashley Gilland, an investigator with the Barrow County District Attorney's office, looks over the assault rifle used in the Apalachee High School shooting by suspect Colt Gray during Gray's sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Judge Nicholas Primm reacts during the sentencing for Colt Gray, right, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, reacts during his sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, is led in by deputies for his sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
Colt Gray, the 16-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect, talks with his defense attorney Charlton Allen during his sentencing at Barrow County Superior Court, Monday, July 27, 2026, in Winder, Ga. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
