Raiders’ Week 6 Win Triggers Foe's Coaching Firing

"After extended conversations with our owner and general manager, we met with Brian Callahan this morning to tell him we are making a change at head coach," stated Brinker. "These decisions are never easy, and they become more difficult when they involve people of great character. We are grateful for Brian's investment in the Titans and Tennessee community during his tenure as head coach. We thank him and his family for being exemplary ambassadors of the Tennessee Titans.

"While we are committed to a patient and strategic plan to build a sustainable, winning football program, we have not demonstrated sufficient growth. Our players, fans, and community deserve a football team that achieves a standard we are not currently meeting, and we are committed to making the hard decisions necessary to reach and maintain that standard."

The Lesson For the Raiders

Tennessee has been a mess for a while and many of the organizational failures associated with the Titans were masked by strong coaching and decent drafting, especially under Mike Vrabel. Vrabel had time to build his program, something not afforded to his successors. In the same way, that's why Vrabel has accelerated the Patriots' rebuild.

Since the end of the 2021 season, the Titans have traded AJ Brown, fired GM Jon Robinson, hired GM Ran Carthon, fired Vrabel, hired Brian Callahan, fired Carthon, hired GM Mike Borgonzi, fired Callahan, and will be looking for his replacement this offseason.

In that same time, the Raiders have failed to deal with the fallout of Jon Gruden's resignation. Since Gruden's 2021 resignation, the Raiders have made the playoffs once and it was that season under Rich Bisaccia.

Following the team's loss to the eventual AFC Champion Cincinnati Bengals in the playoffs, they let Bisaccia walk, fired GM Mike Mayock, hired Josh McDaniels, hired GM Dave Ziegler, fired McDaniels, fired Ziegler, promoted Antonio Pierce and Champ Kelly to interim head coach and general manager positions, hired Pierce full time, demoted Kelly, hired GM Tom Telesco, fired Pierce, fired Telesco, parted ways with Kelly, hired Pete Carroll, hired GM John Spytek, and now both Carroll and Spytek are on the hook for the disaster that has been Geno Smith so far.

So for those who want to blow up the current administration, it's pretty clear what the future looks like. How the Raiders manage the rest of the season will determine how the franchise ends this decade and while the Titans have a new stadium and the promise of Cam Ward to hang on to, if Mark Davis wants to put this franchise back in the Super Bowl, he needs to find a way to stabilize the transitioning period of a first year head coach so Carroll can properly implement his vision that he sold during his interview.

If that vision isn't what the franchise needs now that it's put into practice, same as Callahan, they'll need to act swiftly but if firing is the first option they want to exercise, it's pretty clear a new voice won't overcome institutional instability since that hasn't worked with a single head coach since Jack Del Rio almost a decade ago when the team was in Oakland.

Whatever the Raiders decide to do next, let the Titans be a lesson that sometimes it's not the head coach that's the problem but the result of even deeper issues, whatever that may be.

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