After a 1-5 start to the season, the Tennessee Titans fired head coach Brian Callahan on Monday.
Callahan, who was hired in 2024, went 4-19 as the head coach in Tennessee. The team has yet to announce an interim coach. Titans GM Mike Borgonzi and president of football operations Chad Brinker met with Callahan on Monday morning to inform him of his dismissal. Owner Amy Adams Strunk reached out to Callahan as well, league sources told The Athletic’s Dianna Russini.
— Tennessee Titans (@Titans) October 13, 2025
The 2025 season had been especially rough for Callahan. The Titans began his second season with a loss on the road to the Denver Broncos.
In the game, with the Broncos leading 13-12 in the third quarter, rookie wide receiver Elic Ayomanor made a 23-yard catch on first-and-20. Ayomanor came down with an elbow in-bounds, which is good enough to qualify as a catch. Still, Callahan did not challenge the play because, as he incorrectly stated in his postgame news conference, “an elbow doesn’t equal two feet.”
The Titans punted two plays later and lost the game by eight points. Callahan later acknowledged that his “interpretation of the rule was wrong.”
In the Titans’ Week 3 blowout loss to the Indianapolis Colts, Tennessee had a chance to get within 10 points late in the second quarter but took a delay of game penalty ahead of a 57-yard field goal attempt by Joey Slye, despite both teams having called timeouts ahead of the play. After being backed up five yards, Slye’s 62-yard field goal was blocked, and the Colts instead scored three points on a late-half field goal.
After that Week 3 loss, Callahan handed play-calling duties to quarterbacks coach Bo Hardegree. In the Titans’ first game with Hardegree calling plays, Tennessee was shut out 26-0 by the Houston Texans, giving the Texans their first win of the season.
The offense, led by quarterback Cam Ward, the No. 1 pick from the 2025 NFL Draft, has only scored more than 20 points once in a game — and that came in a wild Week 5 win over the Arizona Cardinals in which one of the touchdowns came when Ward threw an interception that was later fumbled and recovered by Tennessee for a touchdown.
Callahan’s final game was a 20-10 loss on Sunday to the Las Vegas Raiders, in which the offense managed just 225 yards.
Callahan got the job in 2024 after the Titans surprisingly parted ways with Mike Vrabel, who had led Tennessee to two division crowns and three playoff appearances, including a conference championship game in the 2019 season, in his six years as head coach. Vrabel was named 2021 NFL Coach of the Year, but growing friction between him and the Titans’ ownership led to his dismissal following the 2023 season. Tennessee had gone 7-10 and 6-11 in Vrabel’s final two seasons before Callahan took over.
Callahan came to the Titans after serving as the offensive coordinator with the Cincinnati Bengals from 2019 to 2023, though head coach Zac Taylor was the play caller.
In his time with Cincinnati, the Bengals ranked 18th in points scored per game and 21st in yards per game. Before his time in Cincinnati, Callahan was a quarterbacks coach with the Oakland Raiders and Detroit Lions, as well as an assistant in Denver.
Callahan is the son of Bill Callahan, a longtime NFL assistant and former head coach of the Raiders and the University of Nebraska. Bill was hired by his son in 2024 to coach the Titans’ offensive line.
This story will be updated.
