As expected, the Titans will be moving forward this season without Bill Callahan.
In his Tuesday press conference, interim head coach Mike McCoy confirmed Callahan, Tennessee’s offensive line coach, is departing the organization after his son, Brian, was fired as head coach on Monday.
Bill Callahan, 69, was let out of his contract with the Browns to make the lateral move to coach for his son in early 2024. He had been with Cleveland since Kevin Stefanski was hired as head coach in 2020.
A longtime NFL assistant, Bill Callahan carries a reputation as being one of the league’s best offensive line coaches. Since the 90s, he’s served in the position for the Eagles, Raiders, Jets, Cowboys, Washington, and the Browns.
He was also the Raiders’ offensive coordinator under Jon Gruden before being promoted to head coach in 2022 when Gruden was traded to the Buccaneers. Callahan led the Raiders to an AFC title that season before falling to Gruden’s Bucs in Super Bowl XXXVII.
McCoy noted that assistant OL coach Scott Fuchs and offensive assistant Matt Jones will take over the offensive line room going forward.
Otherwise, McCoy noted, there will be no staff changes. Quarterbacks coach Bo Hardegree will continue as the team’s offensive play-caller over offensive coordinator Nick Holz.
The Titans decided on Mike McCoy to be the team’s interim head coach for the rest of the season after firing Brian Callahan on Monday.
McCoy, 53, previously served as the Chargers head coach from 2013-2016, accumulating a 27-37 regular-season record. He also went 1-1 in the postseason, earning a wild card berth in his first season with the club.
The Titans hired him to be a senior offensive assistant earlier in 2025 after he spent 2022-2024 as the Jaguars’ QBs coach.
“What Mike brings right now is experience, leadership,” Titans G.M. Mark Borgonzi said in his press conference on Monday night, via Jim Wyatt of the team’s website. “He has done it before, and I’ve had respect for Mike for a long time.
“We have full confidence in Mike, that he is going to be able to steer the ship here.”
Titans president of football operations Chad Brinker added that the team’s focus now is “pouring everything we can into Mike McCoy and giving him every opportunity from here on out, starting this week.”
Tennessee has a tough task ahead of it in Week 7, with Mike Vrabel’s Patriots coming to Nissan Stadium looking to extend its first-place advantage in the AFC East.
Dysfunctional teams do dysfunctional things. And, currently, the Titans are among the most dysfunctional in the entire NFL.
As it does with other bad teams that stay bad (Browns and Jets, for instance), the dysfunction flows from the top of the organization. In Tennessee, owner Amy Adams Strunk inherited the franchise from team founder Bud Adams (after a clunky few years flowing from the failure of Adams’s estate to designate a controlling owner from among the three branches of his family tree). Her tenure has been sparked by a series of half measures, and by a perception that specific people in the power structure fall in, and out, of her favor.
For now, Chad Brinker has Strunk’s ear. For how long will he have it? Maybe G.M. Mike Borgonzi becomes the next perceived savior. Maybe the next coach emerges as “the guy.”
One thing is clear. Interim head coach Mike McCoy likely won’t emerge as the next trusted confidant. Which means that the Titans will be embarking on a full-blown search for their next head coach.
And the coaching change has come as former coach Mike Vrabel (who never should have been fired) will be returning to town with the AFC East-leading Patriots. He’s 4-2 this year. The Titans are 4-19 since firing him.
It’s a disaster. It’s a mess. And it feels like the Titans have no clear path for finding a way toward contention and, more importantly, relevance.
The Titans, for years, have been irrelevant. Vrabel was making them relevant. Rookie quarterback Cam Ward could make them relevant. They’ll need to nail this next coaching hire in order to have a chance to get to where they want to be.
But here’s the caveat. If the next coach is too good, too strong, too magnetic, too charismatic, the next coach could end up becoming the next guy who captures the influence in Tennessee — and who engineers the ouster of everyone else.
That’s the biggest problem in Tennessee. The owner never presses the reset button. And, because the fans can never press the reset button on ownership, their only way to send a message is to deprive themselves of the thing they love, even when they hate it.
The Titans made major changes at the top of their organization this offseason when they gave president of football operations Chad Brinker more control over the team and hired General Manager Mike Borgonzi, but they opted to hold onto head coach Brian Callahan after he went 3-14 during his first season on the job.
Brinker and Borgonzi might like a mulligan on that decision because they fired Callahan on Monday. Sunday’s lifeless loss to the Raiders made Callahan’s career record 4-19 and Borgonzi said at a press conference that the lack of progress was the reason why the Titans decided to pull the trigger now.
“I have a tremendous amount of respect for Brian, as a person, and as a coach in this league,” Borgonzi said, via the team’s website. “We are looking for growth right now, and we did not see that at this point. But he’s an excellent coach, person, and I wish him the best moving forward.”
The timing of the change makes Cam Ward the fourth straight quarterback picked first overall to see his first NFL coach fired during their rookie season. Even if firing Callahan is understandable given his record, it’s a less than ideal way to break in a young quarterback. Picking the right choice for 2026 will be crucial for Ward and the Titans, but Brinker said the team isn’t writing off the rest of the season with interim head coach Mike McCoy as a lost cause.
“Mike and I will lead that search,” Brinker said. “But what our focus is right now is pouring everything we can into Mike McCoy and giving him every opportunity from here on out, starting this week. We have the Patriots coming to town, and we want to do everything we can to support him the way he needs to be supported so we can go out there and win a football game. So that’s really what our focus is right now.”
The Patriots are coached by Mike Vrabel, who held the same job with the Titans before being fired after the 2023 season. That wasn’t that long ago, but his return will offer a reminder of how quickly and how far the Titans have fallen from the best days of his tenure.
Titans offensive line coach Bill Callahan is leaving the team after it fired his son, Brian, on Monday, Paul Kuharsky of paulkuharsky.com reports.
Bill Callahan, who is considered one of the top offensive line coaches in the league, left the Browns in the 2024 offseason to join his son’s staff.
Yet, the offensive line’s breakdowns have played a big part in the Titans’ 4-19 record under Brian Callahan.
The Titans used the seventh overall pick on offensive lineman JC Latham in 2024, but Latham has struggled in his two seasons. He started at left tackle as a rookie before moving to right tackle this season.
Left tackle Dan Moore, who signed as a free agent in the offseason to play, and center Lloyd Cushenberry, who signed in the 2024 market, also have not lived up to expectations.
Bill Callahan is credited with developing several top offensive linemen, including Hall of Famer Alan Faneca, Brandon Scherff, Trent Williams, Tyron Smith and Zack Martin.
Scott Fuchs, who Bill Callahan selected to be his assistant offensive line coach, is expected to take over the position for the rest of the season.
Bill Callahan was the head coach of the Raiders in 2002-03, compiling a 15-17 record. He also went 3-8 as the interim coach in Washington in 2019.
