Brian Callahan Out In Tennessee …

The Tennessee Titans were first out of the gate in the race to fire their head coach in the midst of the 2025 season; yesterday, the team announced that Brian Callahan was no longer welcome in their facilities.  In one sense, this was to be expected; Callahan had been on the job for one full season in 2024 and 6 games in the 2025 schedule.  His overall record there was 4-19-0 and those numbers are not usually associated with coaching job security.  But I think there is more to this situation than just the numbers.

Brian Callahan got the job in Tennessee based on his performance as the Bengals’ offensive coordinator from 2019 through 2024; he was seen as an innovative offensive mind there and indeed, the Bengals made it to the Super Bowl once during his tenure there.  However, he worked with Joe Burrow as his QB in Cincy; whether you believe that Callahan “developed” Burrow or that Burrow turned Callahan’s strategies into victories, I think it is important to recognize that Joe Burrow is an exceptional NFL QB.

So, Brian Callahan arrives in Tennessee and finds Will Levis and Malik Willis as the incumbent QBs.  Bearing exactly no malice toward either player, there is not an innate talent level equivalent to Joe Burrow in the house.  And suddenly, Brian Callahan’s concepts do not work nearly as well.

• Is he deficient in not altering his offensive construct to exploit better the talent that he does have at the position?  Possibly – – maybe even probably.
• But is less than a season and a half sufficient time for the folks upstairs in Tennessee to conclude that Brian Callahan is a bust as a head coach?

Let me examine that last angle.  The Titans’ owner is Amy Adams Strunk; the only thing I know about her background is that she is the daughter of the late Bud Adams who founded the team as the Houston Oilers in the old AFL back in the 1960s.  Based on reports of recent happenings involving the franchise, I am beginning to think that she has an itch in her trigger finger when I comes to firing people.

• Mike Vrabel was the head coach of the Titans from 2018 to 2023.  Vrabel’s teams made 3 playoff appearances and Vrabel was named NFL Coach of the Year in 2021.  Mike Vrabel was fired after the 2023 season.
• The Titans hired Ran Carthon to be their GM in 2023; he was fired after the 2024 season.
• Brian Callahan lasted less than a season and a half as noted above.
• Hmmm …

With those events as a backdrop, I would hesitate to try to name Callahan’s successor in Tennessee starting in 2026.  Rather, let me speculate on the sort of coach/person who would seek that job.  Let me start with a premise that affects young coaches who are regarded as “the next big thing” in the coaching cosmos – – sort of like what people thought of Brian Callahan in 2024:

• Young coaches get two bites of the apple.  One of them needs to be an unvarnished success or their career aspirations need to be adjusted to “constant coordinator” and not “head coach”.

If that premise is close to correct, then there are some highly regarded coordinators in the NFL now who have already taken “one bite of the apple” and would need to look carefully at the situation in Tennessee to see if that is where they want to take that “second bite.”  Coaches who fall into that category include:

• Brian Flores
• Kliff Kingsbury
• Adam Nagy
• Arthur Smith
• Robert Saleh

There are always a few “greybeards” available to take coaching positions in the NFL.  Coaches in this category are “out of work” at the moment, but they have credentials in the past that make them alluring.  Jon Gruden and Mike McCarthy fit that description now.  However, there is a real gamble in going down that road:

• Maybe you find someone like Dick Vermeil whose “second tour” in the NFL was more successful than his first. – – OR – –
• Maybe you find Joe Gibbs 2.0 who produced a losing record in his second stint on the sidelines as compared to 3 Super Bowl wins in his first.

And of course, there are always folks out there who will take a job as a head coach to collect the generous salary that such a position commands.  Owners who get the reputation as “mercurial” often wind up with coaches in this category.  [Aside: I wonder if some of the coaches hired by Danny Boy Snyder knew from the start that it would not work out well – – but they would have checks to cash no matter what.]

The Tennessee Titans are not a good football team in October 2025.  They have the overall #1 pick from last year’s draft at QB, and he has not exactly taken the league by storm.  In 6 games in 2025, Cam Ward has amassed a total of 1101 yards passing; he has thrown 3 TDs, and he has thrown 4 INTs.

So, what is the “ambience” of the job in Tennessee?

• Is the QB merely suffering growing pains – – or is he never going to be top-shelf?
• Is the owner “mercurial” – – or have these recent hirings/firings been unfortunate occurrences?

And overlaying all the above, this is one of only 32 such positions in the known universe.  That alone makes it a desirable situation.

Finally, I’ll close today with this from Sir Winston Churchill:

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………