Tennessee Titans Fire Head Coach Brian Callahan

Tennessee Titans Fire Head Coach Brian Callahan

The writing on the wall

Callahan’s future looked bleak in 2024, but the team brought him back to serve as a mentor to Ward, despite misgivings from several people in the front office. The casting of the die for Callahan’s future started in the middle of January 2025, when current GM Mike Borgonzi entered the fray. Like most new general managers, Borgonzi likely wanted his own guy in charge, and now he gets his chance. The power structure in Nashville ultimately did not favor the departed coach, as former AGM Chad Brinker overtook Carthon as President of Football Operations in 2025. While the 2025 offseason featured plenty of change within the organization, the coaching staff’s failings doomed the season before it truly began.

How did it get to this point?

The 2025 season began ominously for the dismissed coach when he could not grasp the basic fundamentals of a catch in week one. Callahan failed to challenge a potential Elic Ayomanor catch that ended a possible scoring drive, and later fumbled in his explanation for it. Coach Callahan is on a trend of curiously vacillating between reckless endangerment and extreme conservatism before halftime every week. The weekly heinous and grotesque mismanagement of the “middle eight” cost this team valuable points. Scoring drives are few and far between for this struggling offense, so any blown opportunities are significant blows.

The beginning of the end

Through three weeks of the season, the organization had faltered to the second-worst in the league, with 31 penalties and 261 penalty yards. The numbers could have been even worse had opposing teams not possessed the mercy to decline eight flags. Callahan preached discipline throughout the offseason, but the message clearly hasn’t reached his players.

Week four of the nightmarish 2025 season saw the nadir and most stark reminder to ownership that Callahan didn’t have the chops. The head coach attempted a quick fix by relinquishing play-calling duties, but the offense met an even worse fate. Tennessee endured the worst loss of his tenure with a shutout by the winless Texans. The calls for his job increased dramatically, with outlandish fervor, by the minute as the game progressed. His combative demeanor during the Week 1 postgame press conference sparked cognitive dissonance between him and the media. The death knell began its tolling when he called an utterly contemptuous third-and-12 draw play while trailing. It embodies the passivity and poor game management shown by this grotesquely incompetent staff. Houston delivered a gut punch so decisively that staunch Callahan advocate and usually mellow Cam Ward bemoaned his team.

The embattled coach even glibly remarked that he wasn’t concerned about his job security after the demoralizing loss, which was either a testament to his incredulous naivete or arrogance. Well, he paid dearly for those and other smug remarks with his job in the end. External media personalities without any allegiances have called for his ouster. Former players have also joined the growing chorus.

Furthering the growing dissonance between the head coach and an increasingly blistering media, Callahan did not coach like he meant it while speaking before Week 6.

A Brief Reprieve

Tennessee received a brief glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel in Week 5’s wild and wacky victor y over the Cardinals. Alas, it was a fleeting mirage as the miraculous mental breakdowns by Arizona couldn’t be replicated by the Raiders. However glorious the taste of victory was during those magical moments, consistency was not to be, as the woeful Vegas defense was all over Ward. Standout defensive Jeffery Simmons also commented that the practice sessions haven’t been up to par.

A sentiment echoed by the rookie quarterback, which raises alarms throughout the building that the team isn’t receiving the message as one would hope.

The End of An Era

What’s next?