Brian Callahan became the first NFL head coach of the 2025 season to be fired when the Tennessee Titans axed him on Monday just weeks into his second season with the team.
The beleaguered Titans, including No 1 overall draft pick Cam Ward, have endured a nightmare start to the season, which only got worse with an ugly 20-10 defeat to the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday. Mike McCoy, the former San Diego Chargers head coach, has since been appointed as interim head coach.
And at 1-5 through the first six weeks of the season, the franchise announced that it had decided to ‘make a change at head coach.’
‘These decisions are never easy, and they become more difficult when they involve people of great character,’ a statement from the organization read.
‘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.’
The team, which is expected to move into a new $2.1 billion domed stadium in 2027, said that it was committed to building a ‘sustainable, winning football program.’
The Tennessee Titans have fired head coach Brian Callahan after a woeful start to the season
The Titans have fallen to 1-5, despite having No. draft pick Cam Ward (pictured) under center
‘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,’ it added.
General manager Mike Borgonzi, controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk and the rest of the team’s brass now begin a process of finding the next head coach. An interim head coach has not yet been named.
Callahan, 41, had been at the helm in Music City for just 23 games, amassing a miserable record of 4-19 during that brief period.
The coach had clearly been feeling the heat following Sunday’s loss as he called out quarterback Ward, who the team had selected with this year’s No 1 draft pick.
‘I am incredibly discouraged by the outcome,’ the coach said Sunday. ‘We felt good coming into the game. To not be able to perform well on offense and not be able to score any points and then lose the game is disappointing.
‘And we all gotta be better, Cam’s a part of that too, Cam’s gotta play better football as well. We gotta coach better, we gotta play better, all those things.’
Yet, Titans defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons issued a damning verdict of the sentiment from the locker room on Sunday, claiming the team had one of its worst weeks of practice heading into the game.
‘In this league, you have to learn how to stack wins,’ Simmons said, via Buck Reasing of 104.5 The Zone. ‘To be able to carry that momentum over — it started at practice. If I’m being honest, this was one of our worst weeks of practice. Came out flat Thursday and things like that — sometimes things carry over. In this league, you have to prove it every week and reprove it.’
Callahan’s dismissal comes after Tennessee suffered a 20-10 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders
Amid mounting pressure following a 41-20 home loss to the Indianapolis Colts, during which fans had chanted ‘fire Callahan,’ the head coach had relinquished play-calling duties to quarterbacks coach Bo Hardegree.
However, that didn’t help measures as the team went on to suffer a shutout 26-0 loss to the Houston Texans in Week 4. It was the first time the Titans had been held scoreless since October 2019.
‘We’re 0-4. At this point, we have nothing to lose,’ Ward said at the time. ‘We’ve dropped a quarter of our (expletive) games and have yet to do anything. We have to lock in, especially myself. In all three phases, we have to play together and have not done it this year yet.’
Callahan’s exit marks the first head coach axing of the 2025 NFL season with New York Jets head coach Aaron Glenn miraculously still holding down his job in the Big Apple, despite failing to clinch a win.
The Titans face the 4-2 New England Patriots and former head coach Mike Vrabel at Nissan Stadium on Sunday.
Vrabel, Callahan’s predecessor, was also axed by the Titans in January 2024 after six seasons with the team. He led Tennessee to two division crowns and three playoff appearances, including a conference championship game in the 2019 season, and was named 2021 NFL Coach of the Year.
Before arriving in Tennessee, Callahan served as the offensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals.
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 to coach the Titans’ offensive line in 2024.
