The Tennessee Titans fired head coach Brian Callahan on Monday after a 1-5 start to the season.
“After extensive conversations with our owner and general manager, we met with Brian Callahan this morning to tell him we are making a change at the head coaching position,” Chad Brinker, president of football operations, said in a team release. “These decisions are never easy, and they become more difficult when they involve people of high moral 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.”
Callahan, then the Cincinnati Bengals’ offensive coordinator, was hired in January 2024. The Titans were 3-14 last season under Callahan, 41, and had “not demonstrated sufficient growth,” Brinker said.
“Our players, our fans and our community deserve a football team that reaches a level that we are not currently reaching, and we are committed to making the difficult decisions necessary to achieve and maintain that level,” he said.
Brinker was part of a new power structure installed at the end of the 2024 season, when the Titans fired general manager Ran Carthon. Carthon stayed one season following the decision not to bring back head coach Mike Vrabel after two sub-.500 seasons.
As timing would have it, Vrabel will lead the visiting Patriots in Nashville on Sunday.
Between Brinker and the head coach in the Titans’ current, atypical power structure is first-year general manager Mike Borgonzi. Borgonzi is a first-time general manager who spent 14 seasons scouting with the Kansas City Chiefs.
There has been no official word from the Titans regarding an interim coach or the immediate future of Bill Callahan, Tennessee’s offensive line coach and Brian Callahan’s father.
The Titans lost 20-10 to the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.
Brian Callahan said more was expected of everyone on the team, including rookie quarterback and No. 1 overall draft pick Cam Ward. Ward and veteran defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons said the team lacked some fundamentals, especially after its first win of the season in Week 5.
“Today was bad football,” Simmons said Sunday. “We didn’t play well at all today.”
Simmons said the team had a bad week of practice.
“In this league you have to learn to accumulate wins and keep that momentum going,” he said. “It started in practice. To be honest, it was probably one of our worst weeks of practice. We came out flat on Thursday. Sometimes things just linger.”
Ward wasn’t sharp on Sunday. The No. 1 pick in the 2025 NFL Draft was 26-of-38 passing for 222 yards and a touchdown, but he was intercepted and lost two fumbles.
“We have to try new things, and if we want to stay the course, we have to make it work,” Ward said. “Really, the players and coaching staff either continue to call a play and execute it, or ultimately we have to do our job as a whole. At the end of the day, there’s only so much coaches can do. We as players have to do our job.”
On Sunday, the Titans will host Vrabel and his New England Patriots team (4-2).
–Field level media
