Titans make Brian Callahan NFL’s 1st coach fired this year after 4-19 record and 1-5 start

By Canadian Press on October 13, 2025.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Titans started this season knowing the franchise is rebuilding with lots of work required to become a good program.

Brian Callahan didn’t produce enough growth six games into his second season, and that cost him his job on Monday, when he became the first NFL coach fired this season.

“We want to win as many football games as we can possibly win,” Chad Brinker, the Titans’ president of football operations, said Monday night. “But we preached and talked about the growth, and we just have not seen the growth with the team to this point.”

Brinker said he and general manager Mike Borgonzi met with controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk as usual on Monday morning before telling Callahan that Tennessee was letting him go. The Titans announced hours later that Mike McCoy would serve as interim coach.

Then, about 6 1/2 hours after the firing was announced, Brinker and Borgonzi finally talked to reporters. Borgonzi deferred questions about the assistant coaches to McCoy, who will speak to local media for the first time Tuesday. NFL veteran Bill Callahan came to Tennessee to coach the offensive line for his son.

The Titans are 1-5 for a second straight season. Brinker said they will keep working to get the franchise on the right track, noting he and Borgonzi are part of a front office that has combined to win nine Super Bowl titles with various teams.

“We’ve seen what winning football looks like and we know what that looks like,” Brinker said. “It’s still early in the season, and there’s a lot of work to be done. There’s still a lot of football to play. … We’re just as frustrated as as our fans are.”

McCoy joined the team in March as a senior offensive assistant, and he was 27-37 in four seasons coaching the then-San Diego Chargers between 2013 and 2016, losing 23 of his last 32 games before being fired. He was an offensive coordinator for Denver in 2017 and Arizona in 2018.

His first game leading the Titans comes Sunday against former Tennessee coach Mike Vrabel and his New England Patriots (4-2).

Callahan went 4-19, which featured a 10-game skid.

He became just the second coach fired during the season by this franchise since it relocated from Houston to Nashville in 1997, joining Ken Whisenhunt, who was 3-20 when fired in November 2015. That stint also included a 10-game skid to end the 2014 season.

This is just the latest of several personnel shakeups within the past three years:

— General manager Jon Robinson was fired on Dec. 6, 2022.

— GM Ran Carthon was hired on Jan. 18, 2023.

— Vrabel was fired on Jan. 9, 2024.

— Callahan was hired on Jan. 24, 2024.

— Carthon was fired on Jan. 7, 2025.

— Borgonzi was hired on Jan. 17, 2025.

The Titans had said they wanted to see improvement this season with first-time head coach Callahan going into his second year, this time with a rookie quarterback in Cam Ward. Yet Callahan had to hand off play-calling duties after dropping to 0-3 with the offense struggling.

That change didn’t help.

The Titans have scored 83 points and are averaging 3.94 yards per play. Only the 2019 Jets, the 2018 Bills in Josh Allen’s rookie year, the 2009 Browns, the 2009 Raiders in JaMarcus Russell’s last season and the 2007 49ers have scored fewer than 84 points while averaging less than 4 yards per play through six games in the past 20 seasons.

Brinker noted the special teams and defense have played pretty well.

“We’ve struggled on offense,” Brinker said. “I mean, that’s not a secret. And we need to be better there on that side of the ball.”

Of the 241 NFL coaches who have coached at least 20 games or more since the 1970 merger, Callahan ranks 237th with a .174 winning percentage. The only coaches who were worse were Jim Ringo (.130), Marty Mornhinweg (.156), Chris Palmer (.156) and Rod Dowhower (.172).

The Titans have played at least seven rookies in each game this season, led by Ward, the No. 1 draft pick. Brinker said: “We need to see him grow as a football player as well. So all that’s a factor.”

Callahan was hired in January 2024 for his work with quarterbacks including Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow, the No. 1 pick in 2020.

But Ward is the most-sacked quarterback in the NFL, with 25 already, including a pair of games with six sacks each, following Sunday’s 20-10 loss to the Raiders.

This marks the fourth time in five years that a team that picked a quarterback with the No. 1 selection fired the coach during the season.

Callahan joins Matt Eberflus (Chicago, 2024), Frank Reich (Carolina, 2023) and Urban Meyer (Jaguars, 2021) in that group. Hue Jackson also was fired by Cleveland in 2018 and former Titans coach Jeff Fisher by the Rams in 2016 in the same situation.

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Teresa M. Walker, The Associated Press