This wasn’t a Brian Callahan Problem — It’s a Tennessee Titans Problem
So, 23 games into his career as the head coach of the Tennessee Titans, Brian Callahan is fired uh after a one and five start to the season. And we got to say a couple of things here. Yes, the Titans don’t look good. No, the Titans didn’t look good last year. But here’s why firing Brian Callahan six games into this season was a terrible mistake by an organization who is pretty good at making terrible mistakes. Look, you hired Brian Callahan last year knowing full well you didn’t have a quarterback on your roster. I mean, yes, you had human beings that played quarterback. You didn’t have a quarterback. You started Will Levvice. Uh you tried Mason Rudolph. So basically, you knew that going into year two, you needed to get Brian Callahan a quarterback. And you did that. You had the number one overall pick. And there were teams, including the Giants, that were offering you quite a delicious package of players and picks to move up to get the number one overall pick to take Cam Ward. But as the Tennessee Titans, as an organization, they no, we’re going to take Cam Ward. He’s our guy. So, if you have a coach that you’ve hired the year before that you were so sure he was the guy, uh you made him uh a head a head coach in the NFL after a few years as an offensive coordinator uh with the Cincinnati Bengals. Obviously, a good good run there. You now pair up your quarterback with your head coach and yet [ __ ] can it six games in. This is not really a Brian Calahan problem, nor is it a Cam Ward problem. It’s a Tennessee Titans problem. In fact, the last four quarterbacks to go number one overall in the draft all had their head coaches fired in their rookie year. Uh Cam Ward this year, Caleb Williams last year with Matt Iberluse. Bryce Young had Frank Reich in 2023 and Trevor Lawrence in 2021 had Urban Meyer. Now, to be fair, that’s an outlier because Urban Meyer is the worst head coach in the history of the NFL. And it’s not even up for debate. I mean, he’s a legendary college football coach. Don’t get me wrong, one of the best and the worst, literally the worst head coach in the history of the NFL. And I have plenty of statistics to back that up if you want. Maybe that’s another show and another pod, but that’s just a fact. Trevor Lawrence should have never been paired with Urban Meyer to begin with. But what we’re seeing are organizational failures here. Um Matt Eberlu’s if you’re going to again Matt Ilflu’s situation was very similar to that of what we have with Brian Callahan and the Tennessee Titans. If you’re going to bring him back, that’s the mistake. If you don’t like him, fire him before you draft the quarterback for him to work with. Right? You want to have those two positions in lock step. You look at the great organizations around the NFL. What did they have? They have a head coach and a quarterback in lock step for many, many years in New England Tom Brady, Bill Bich, Indianapolis for many, many years Tony Dunie, Payton Manning. Now you have in Buffalo, Josh Allen, Shawn McDermott, Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes. You need those guys in lockstep. And you never know what Cam Ward is going to be if you keep changing the plans that they have for him. This is not just the Tennessee Titans doing Brian Callahan a disservice. And again, I’m not saying they’re a good football team in any way, shape, or form, but he was a rookie head coach last year without a quarterback. Everyone knew you were going to suck, okay? And if you didn’t know that, Tennessee, that’s on you. You’re not being honest with yourselves. Okay? So, you get this guy. he gets a a rookie quarterback that you take number one overall in the draft and six games, six games is all you get for these guys to figure things out. That’s terrible organizational management. It’s it’s it’s a Tennessee problem. And you know, Mike Vrabel, whom you fired, how’s that going in New England? They’re in first place in the AFC East coming off a road win over Buffalo. And then you see what happened this past week uh when the Buffalo Bills lost on Monday Night Football. Suddenly the AFC East is very much in play. And I know what Tennessee Titan fans are going to say right now. Oh, come on, Trey. Mike Vrabel lost 18 of his last 24 games with the Titans. Yes, because they didn’t have a quarterback. Because they didn’t have an organizational plan for the most important position in team sports in this country. Once again, I say to you, this is not about Mike Vrabel or Brian Callahan. It’s about the Tennessee Titans being a terribly run organization. That’s a fact. Okay. The numbers are what the numbers are. Mike Vrabel as the Titans head coach took Ryan Tanahill to an AFC Championship game. He took Ryan Tanahill as his quarterback to an AFC Championship game. And twice in that AFC Championship game, they had a 10-point lead on the Kansas City Chiefs before the Chiefs became the inevitable force that we know them to be. So, I don’t want to sit here and listen to Tennessee Titan fans saying Mike Brabel was a losing coach over his last 24 games. What did he do before that when he had a marginal slightly better than average quarterback? Right? When you don’t have a quarterback in this league, you cannot win. What is Bill Bichc’s record in the NFL without Tom Brady? It sucks. Okay, with Brady, as we’ve mentioned on the Straight Facts only podcast, he won about 75% of his games. Without Brady, with Cleveland and the New England Patriots, he won about 44% of his games. It’s like the quarterback position is really important. So, I have no idea what Brian Callahan could have been with Cam Ward in Tennessee or what Cam Ward could have been with Brian Callahan. But the shest way to mess up your franchise quarterback is to fire the head coach and change over so much of the play calling and the coaching staff midway or not even onethird of the way through his rookie year. You’ve just you’ve just taken the development of that quarterback down. You’re not elevating him. You’re taking him down. And we’re finally seeing fruits of what’s happened to Caleb Williams with Ben Johnson now in Chicago. But that has been uh no certainty. You you just can’t give a coach six games with a rookie quarterback and expect to have it all figured out. There is no patience in football these days, whether it’s in the NFL or quite frankly in college football as well. Look, I get it. Penn State had three losses in a row. Two of them to teams they probably should have beaten. But you fire James Franklin after a three-game losing streak when over the last three seasons before that he won 10 games, 11 games, and 13 games and was a game away from playing for the national championship. And now because you panicked in Happy Valley, you got to pay him what, like $50 million because of you fired him without cause and just because he lost three games. That’s a panic level at Penn State, similar to what we’re seeing so often in the NFL. And you know, look, we’ve seen these quarterbacks go other places outside the organization where they drafted him and have success. We’re seeing it with Daniel Jones right now. We’ve seen it with Baker Mayfield. We’ve seen it with Sam Darnell. Gino Smith reclaimed his career in Seattle. The league is filled with quarterbacks who went from a bad situation to a slightly more stable situation. And amazingly, what happened? They got a lot better at quarterback, right? So, this to me about what Tennessee did, and again, I want to be 100% clear, they’re not a good football team, but that doesn’t mean they can’t become a good football team. That doesn’t mean that Cam and Bryant can’t find a way to work together. And I get it, Brian had his flaws. There were a couple times, you last year, he was screaming at Will Levvice, but to be fair, Will Levves was doing some dumb [ __ ] Okay, there was a four or five week stretch last year where the Will Levves meme was, you know, this or this or I didn’t see him making all kinds of wild gestures on the field. It’s not like Will Levis wasn’t doing things that should make Brian Callahan angry. Now, you can argue maybe he needed to control those emotions, and that’s fine. I I I can understand that point, but what we’ve seen in Tennessee is they have no patience. Like again, Mike Vrabel took Ryan Tanahill to the AFC Championship game and then when he didn’t have a quarterback, you booted him. Uh I just, you know, and oh, by the way, this is the same Tennessee Titans organization that traded away AJ Brown to Philadelphia and thought that they could replace him with Trayon Burks, who was now basically out of football. So, you know, this all all of this doesn’t look good much more for the Tennessee Titans than it does for Bryant Callahan. And it’s a panic move at Penn State, too. Look, you need you need consistency in the NFL. And you need to give people time. Now, if if you go the whole season with Brian Callahan and Cam Ward and let’s say they’re two and 15, I get it. Okay. Six games. There is no way six games is enough time to judge a quarterback coming off his rookie season, a head coach coming off his first year as a head coach, then pairing him with a rookie quarterback taking number one overall. But again, not like some of these other number one overall picks that a lot of people were surefire uh going to be as good as they could possibly be. Cam Ward was the number one quarterback taken in a draft that was okay when it came to quarterback play. I just don’t think you gave Brian an opportunity and you didn’t give Cam an opportunity. And if I’m looking to point the blame somewhere for what happened in Tennessee, it is absolutely at the organization more than the player or the coach because I’ve seen what the Titans have done before. And that’s straight facts, homie.
Trey Wingo breaks down Brian Callahan’s rise as one of the NFL’s most intriguing coaching minds, analyzing his impact on offensive development and quarterback play using real stats—not speculation.
From his work in Cincinnati to his current challenges and opportunities, this episode explores how Callahan’s play-calling philosophy, personnel decisions, and adaptability stack up against the league’s best.
If you’re tired of hot takes and want real football insight grounded in numbers and coaching logic, this is the conversation for you.
#BrianCallahan #NFLAnalysis #FootballStrategy #NFLCoaches #QBDevelopment #OffensiveScheme #FilmStudy #NFLBreakdown #SportsAnalysis #NoHotTakes #SeriousFootballFans
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1 comment
2:14 The WORST! 😂