News came down earlier this week that the Titans decided to move on from head coach and former Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan. And, while we knew that he was notlong for the job, we did not realize just how soon his departure would come.
The Titans hired the former Cincinnati offensive coordinator as their head coach in 2024, hoping for a Bengals-esque resurgence similar to the one Callahan was a part of in the Queen City.
And while everything was in place for the Titans to expect a Bengals-like turnaround, unfortunately for Callahan, two critical things were missing. And the one thing he had in Tennessee that he lacked with the Bengals sealed his fate in the end.
Brian Callahan followed the Bengals’ blueprint, until it fell apart
The Titans were on the same route that the Bengals took to the Super Bowl in Callahan’s and Taylor’s third year in Cincinnati.
Taylor had an abysmal rookie coaching season, which resulted in him landing the number one overall pick and the star LSU quarterback. They followed that up with another awful season that allowed them to land Ja’Marr Chase with the 5th overall pick in the 2021 draft.
The Titans went 3-14 in Callahan's first year in Nashville. As a result, they landed the first-overall pick and their own franchise quarterback in Cam Ward.
Tennessee began 2025 with a 1-5 start. But rather than getting a chance to turn things around in his third year, the Titans’ brass gave in to external and internal pressure to move on from their relatively new head coach.
The reason the Titans ultimately made that decision is due to two things he had and one thing he did not in Cincinnati.
Brian Callahan benefited from Cincinnati’s supremely patient ownership
In Cincinnati, Brian Callahan and head coach Zac Taylor had a patient owner willing to endure two horrible seasons to reach the third in hopes of winning a championship. That is something that might have only happened in Cincinnati.
However, that patience paid off with a Super Bowl appearance in Taylor's third year and a second consecutive AFC Championship game the following season.
Marvin Lewis turned around a franchise that was once dubbed the worst professional franchise in North American sports in the 90s.
Lewis spent 16 seasons as head coach. He won four AFC North Championships, seven playoff appearances (five consecutive), and owns the most franchise wins as a head coach, but never won a playoff game.
Head coach Dave Shula was the head coach from 1992 until the 1996 season, when he was let go seven games into the season. That is five and a half years as head coach without ever coming close to a winning record and a winning percentage of .268.
The C-suite hired Zac Taylor as head coach and Callahan as offensive coordinator in 2019. In his first two seasons in the Queen City, the team went 2-14 and 4-11-1, respectively.
Their .203 winning percentage in those first two seasons was worse than Shula, the worst coach in franchise history.
Other notable firings around the NFL at this time included the Cleveland Browns' dismissal of Freddie Kitchens after a 6-10 season and the Arizona Cardinals' termination of Steve Wilks following a 3-13 rookie campaign. Both of them coached just one season.
Taylor and Callahan were never in danger of being let go after their first season or second season. That is because they worked for arguably the most patient owner in the NFL.
Brian Callahan lacked franchise-altering superstars in Tennessee
The writing was on the wall for quarterback Joe Burrow to be one of the best quarterbacks in the league in his rookie season. That promise came to fruition in his second season when he led the Bengals to the Super Bowl.
We can say the same for Burrow’s running mate at LSU, Ja’Marr Chase. Everyone saw that becoming the best wide receiver in the NFL was the floor for the former LSU star.
In leading the Bengals to the big game, most acknowledged that the success was due to the players rather than the coaching of head coach Zac Taylor or Callahan, the offensive coordinator.
Nevertheless, we would argue that the players in question are so outstanding that they could lift the team out of mediocrity on their own merit.
And they get extra points for helping Mike Brown and the 'notoriously cheap' Bengals franchise to the Super Bowl.
Brian Callahan avoided players turning on him as Bengals OC
The one major thing that Taylor has not experienced in Cincinnati, which Callahan had in Tennessee, was a star player attributing leadership to the lack of winning.
Earlier in the week, on the eve of his firing, Titans star Jeffrey Simmons pointed to leadership as the reason for what was going wrong on the field.
#Titans DT Jeffery Simmons said this after Sunday's loss and it carried a lot of water in Tennessee and ultimately on HC Brian Callahan:
— Jordan Schultz (@Schultz_Report) October 13, 2025
"It started at practice. Just being honest? This was probably one of our worst weeks of practice."
(via @BuckReising)pic.twitter.com/oQUUNcZ3hj https://t.co/qDo0HRDd1w
Simmons' comments came after their first-overall rookie quarterback’s epic press conference, where he summed up how things were going this season very succinctly.
Some players in the Bengals’ locker room have shown frustration during the Taylor regime. The most memorable of which was Chase’s ‘I’m always open’ declaration.
But not even Chase’s diatribe reached the level of disrespect that was coming out of the Titans’ locker room.
And Taylor has avoided players’ intrusive thoughts from turning into public displays of frustration aimed at him. At least, for now that is.
The Titans must now begin to search for their new leader, who will lead them into the 2026 season. Whoever that coach is will face the same challenge Callahan did.
The new coach must try to get Cam Ward to a Burrow-esque level of play, draft a Chase-level receiver, get the team’s stars to buy into the coach’s vision and plan when things get rough, and hope the ownership is patient enough to let things play out for longer than a season and a half.
Good luck with that.