NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Some time Monday night during their in-person interview with Brian Callahan, the Titans knew they had found their man.
They just needed to make sure he didn’t leave the building before agreeing to be the team’s next head coach. Fortunately for them, Callahan wanted to be in Tennessee as much as they wanted him here.
The two sides struck a deal and Thursday the 39-year-old was introduced as the 20th head coach in franchise history. As he began to speak the Titans new vision started to come into clearer view.
The Titans spoke of their vision when they made the decision to part ways with Mike Vrabel on Jan. 9th, but they declined to define it publicly and neither controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk or general manager Ran Carthon – who was elevated to Executive Vice President Wednesday – elaborated on the vision Thursday.
But the decision to hire Callahan and his words during a press conference that ran about 35 minutes demonstrates a cultural fit that seemingly was lacking at the end of the Mike Vrabel era in Tennessee.
Titans leadership was initially impressed by Callahan’s resume. He’s a son of former NFL head coach and offensive line guru Bill Callahan, and he’s worked with multiple top end quarterbacks and dynamic offenses at his various stops around the league. But it was the way he conducted himself in person that sold Adams Strunk and the rest of the Titans interviewing committee.
Callahan is a good communicator that has worked effectively in collaboration with others at multiple stops throughout his career. Perhaps most importantly, he demonstrated a desire to be, not just the head coach but a member of the Titans organization.
“From the moment of our first Zoom meeting, I felt an unbelievable connection to the people in the room,” Callahan said. “The connection from the get-go was incredible, and I knew that it was going to be a place that I wanted to call home. It felt like that from the very beginning. I'm thankful that they felt the same way. I was about to make an impassioned plea to Ran as our meeting was concluding on Monday evening, and it turns out I didn't have to do that. They wanted me exactly the same way that I wanted them. Everything felt right.”
Adams Strunk didn’t need to be begged. Her mind had already been made up.
Once she saw Callahan’s personal skills she got see the football coach interact with Carthon, and the building blocks for what a Titans team could look like.
“He exceeded all of our expectations,” Adams Strunk said as she introduced the new coach. “It was clear how the meeting quickly shifted from your standard interview to a player-breakdown session, that he and Ran (Carthon) had a very special chemistry between them. Honestly, watching that interaction unfold made us even more confident that he was our next head coach. As our second interview went on, we realized that we didn't want him leaving the building without agreeing to be our next head coach”
Callahan brings the Titans’ vision to life.
He’s an innovative offensive coach that’s served as a resource for veteran quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Matthew Stafford and Derek Carr and mentored young QBs like Joe Burrow and Jake Browning in the second half of this season in Cincinnati. His ideas and experience should serve the Titans well as he tries to develop Will Levis into a bonafide franchise quarterback and jump start a struggling offense that hasn’t scored 30 points in a game in two full seasons.
But Callahan brings more than just an offensive mindset to the table. He believes in analytics in scouting and game management and seems eager to work with newly appointed President of Football Operations Chad Brinker and any other person or resource the team can provide to find a competitive edge.
“You're using hard concrete data to help inform decision making and that's great,” Callahan said. “The more smart people, the more information that you're given, the better decisions you can make. I believe in that information. I believe in that data. And again, the game-management part, the statistical analysis, all those things, play a huge role in how we're going to build our organization.
Callahan also promises to clearly define expectations and roles for players, and demand high standards for everyone in the organization. That’s music to the ears of Carthon, who seemingly spent the past year trying to figure out his own role within an organization dominated by Vrabel’s presence.
“The one thing that stood out to us with Cally was just his ability to not only know what he wants, but be able to articulate that in a clear and concise manner,” Carthon said. “And what that would allow us to do is allow our players to understand what their roles are and go out and execute and play fast, which is what we're going to do. But the only other side of that, as a scout, as a personnel guy, it gives us the ability to know what we're going out to hunt for. One thing that we keep talking about here, as our group, is hunting at the same time isn't the same as hunting together. Under Brian Callahan, we will be going out and hunting together.
Ultimately, the Titans success in the Callahan era will come down to how well he and Carthon hunt together. Can they find the players to rebuild this roster and make this team competitive, if not next season in the very near future? And can the new coach turn that roster not just into a winner, but into a Super Bowl contender?
Callahan knows the way. He was a part of a Super Bowl winner in Denver, and a member of the Bengals staff that stunned the no. 1 seed Titans at Nissan Stadium in 2021 on the way to the AFC Championship.
Adams-Strunk is banking on him getting her team over the hump and delivering the organization and the state of Tennessee their first ever Super Bowl winner.
Only time will tell if Callahan is the man to do it. Most NFL coaching hires “win” the press conference, while only a few go on to have the type of sustained success Adams Strunk wants.
But Thursday you saw how Callahan fits into the plan, and for the first time in a long time it feels like the Titans know exactly who they want to be.
