By Joe Rexrode, Paul Dehner Jr. and Mark Puleo
The Tennessee Titans are finalizing a deal to hire Brian Callahan as their next coach, a team source told The Athletic. Callahan joins the Titans after spending the past five years as the Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator.
Callahan was in Nashville for a second interview Monday and the Titans, who saw him as their top coaching target, made sure to work towards an agreement before he left.
Callahan joined Zac Taylor in Cincinnati and has helped rebuild the Bengals from a cellar-dwelling team to one that has put together three consecutive winning seasons and reached Super Bowl LVI.
The Titans job was vacant after Mike Vrabel was fired Jan. 9 after six seasons with the team. Vrabel went 42-24 in his tenure, but the team slipped to 6-11 in 2023.
What Tennessee is getting in Callahan
Callahan comes with the pedigree of an offensive and quarterback guru. He spent his life around the game growing up in the shadows of his father, former NFL coach Bill Callahan, but truly grew in the shadows of Peyton Manning. As an emerging offensive assistant in Denver he really learned to understand the position at the highest level. He went on to work with Matthew Stafford, Derek Carr and, ultimately, groom Joe Burrow as well. But what will separate Callahan are the lessons he helped install and saw flourish in building culture that changed the Bengals’ franchise.
He was the right-hand man of Taylor for every decision of the last five years in Cincinnati’s growth from punchline to back-to-back AFC Championship Games. He’s taken full control in molding an offense that thrived building around Burrow. He brings a style opposite of Vrabel in many ways in that he leans toward a lighter, player-friendly offseason and prefers to lean heavily into the passing game. His style with Taylor has not been rigid, though, morphing often from year to year and even month to month in recent years. — Paul Dehner Jr., Bengals beat writer
Titans went the correct route for Will Levis
It made sense for the Titans to cast a wide net and not confine their search to offensive coaches, because you never know where an interview might lead, but landing on one always made the most sense. This is an OC-obsessed league right now, especially when it comes to anyone with a Kyle Shanahan/Sean McVay link, and Taylor comes from that tree — with some of Callahan’s early NFL experience coming in Denver under an early West Coast disciple, Gary Kubiak.
Callahan didn’t call plays in Cincinnati, but he obviously worked closely with Burrow and found success for Jake Browning this season. He was quarterbacks coach in previous stops in Oakland and Detroit, and what Will Levis needs now is a stable partner in his development. Hiring an offensive coach means the guy who sets the foundation of everything Levis is doing can’t be hired away by another team. — Joe Rexrode, Titans beat writer
Another key offensive staff hire seems to be a lock now
The Titans had one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL last season, and while that’s about personnel more than coaching, a top offensive line coach is badly needed in Nashville. It would stand to reason that Callahan would bring in his father for that purpose.
Callahan has been Cleveland’s offensive line coach the past four seasons and has extensive experience working with that position, along with head coaching stints with the Oakland Raiders and Nebraska Cornhuskers. Callahan helped set the foundation under Barry Alvarez in 1990 for offensive line domination at Wisconsin that carried on for decades after he left. As far as offensive coordinator, two obvious names are Carolina Panthers OC Thomas Brown — who interviewed for the Titans job — and Kentucky Wildcats OC Liam Coen, who coached Levis in 2021. — Rexrode
Required reading
(Photo: Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
