Titans, Brian Callahan won't make the same mistake former Tennessee Head Coach made with travel plans on 2025 NFL schedule

From zero primetime games, to a shocking five (!) late window games, an ideal Week 10 bye, to a five-week homestand that keeps them in Nashville the entirety of November; the Titans schedule elicits some intrigue.

Whenever a team gets an extended stay at home like the Titans do in Weeks 9-13, there's always going to be a tradeoff with a long road trip somewhere on the calendar to balance things out. The AFC is the conference that gets one more home game than away game this year (an alternating result of playing a 17 game schedule), so they aren't going on any trips quite as long as their stay at home. But in Weeks 4-6, they're out of town for three straight games.

All three trips take them west, traveling further towards the Pacific coast each time. They begin in Houston at noon, which is a comfortable annual jaunt. But then they head to Glendale, Arizona and Las Vegas, Nevada for a pair of 3:05pm CST games against the Cardinals and Raiders.

Sometimes when teams have back-to-back trips across the country in the same general vicinity, they'll choose to stay out there for the week. It saves money, saves time, saves everybody from the physical toll of traveling multiple time zones back and forth four times, and is just generally less of a headache. So will the Titans entertain this strategy with Arizona and Vegas early on the calendar?

They will not, per team sources. They're both ultimately not that bad of trips, I was told. And on top of it not being worth an extended stay logistically, those who have paid attention to the Titans long enough will know that the last time a Titans team stayed out west, it didn't go very well.

In 2017, the Mike Mularkey/Marcus Mariota-lead Titans were 8-4 coming off of a pair of divisional wins over Indy and Houston. Next up was an odd stretch of three consecutive games against the NFC West: at Arizona, at San Francisco, and then back home vs the Rams. They would go on to lose all three, falling to 8-7. They finished 9-7, pulled off a wildcard weekend classic upset over the Chiefs in which Mariota completed a touchdown pass to himself, and then got steamrolled by the Brady Patriots in the divisional round. Infamously, first-year head coach Mike Mularkey was fired that offseason despite the winning campaign and playoff victory.

What some people don't know, however, is that the beginning of the end for Mularkey's regime was that western road trip. Titans decision-makers decided to stay out west for the week between the Cardinals and 49ers games, and as you can imagine on that kind of work trip, everybody in the organization spends a lot of time in closer quarters than usual.

Perhaps due to a bit of cabin fever, this is where talks began amongst higher-ups in the organization about the changes needed to Mularkey's coaching staff. Despite the winning, the writing was on the wall inside the organization: Mike needed to make some tough decisions when the season was over. The rest is history, as Mularkey didn't see it the same way, aggressively defending his guys, and critical relationships began to fall apart from there.

Would the same thing happen if the Titans took a similar trip this year? Probably not. And this story isn't the primary reason they won't be staying out west. But it is something that crossed the minds of current Titans decision makers in the process.