The Tennessee Titans fired head coach Brian Callahan on Monday after a 1-5 start to the season.
“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, said Chad Brinker, president of football operations, in a team statement. “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.”
Callahan, then the offensive coordinator of the Cincinnati Bengals, 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, 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,” 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 for one season following a 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 into Nashville on Sunday.
Between Brinker and the head coach under the Titans’ current, atypical power structure is first-year general manager Mike Borgonzi. Borgonzi is a first-time GM who spent 14 seasons in scouting with the Kansas City Chiefs.
There was no official word from the Titans about 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 from 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 was lacking in some fundamentals, especially coming off their first win of the season in Week 5.
“Today was bad football,” Simmons said on Sunday. “We didn’t play good today at all.”
Simmons said the team had a bad week of practice.
“In this league, you have to learn how to be able to stack wins and carry that momentum over,” he said. “It started at practice. Just being honest, this was probably one of our worst weeks of practice. We came out flat Thursday. Sometimes things carry over.”
Ward was not sharp on Sunday. The No. 1 overall pick of 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’re going to stay the course, we need to make the course work,” Ward said. “It’s really just both the players and coaching staff continuing to either call out a play and execute the play, or at the end of the day, we have to do our job as a whole. At the end of the day, the coaches, they can only do so much. We as players have to do our jobs.”
On Sunday, the Titans host Vrabel and his New England Patriots (4-2) squad.
