Six days before hosting the New England Patriots, the Tennessee Titans made a drastic move. Coming off a loss to the Las Vegas Raiders that dropped them to 1-5 on the year, they fired head coach Brian Callahan.
Callahan had joined the team during the 2024 offseason, replacing now-Patriots HC Mike Vrabel, and has experienced limited success. His team went a combined 4-19 with little development visible between his first and second seasons on the job.
Now, Mike McCoy will be tasked with leading the team
as interim through the rest of the year — starting Sunday against New England.
“We’ll have to be prepared for everything,” Vrabel told reporters at Gillette Stadium on Wednesday.
“There’s a lot of fakes in the history with the coordinator. May go for it more in whatever situation. We’ll have to be prepared for whatever that may be, whatever wrinkles — the things that Mike liked or didn’t like, that’s going to be his prerogative, and we’ll have to be prepared for whatever it is, try to execute the keys, all the things that we feel like are important each and every week.”
McCoy is no stranger to serving as head coach. A former coordinator in Carolina and Denver, he led the then-San Diego Chargers to 28 wins in 66 games between 2013 and 2016.
In March, Callahan and the Titans brought McCoy aboard to serve as a senior offensive assistant. The hope was that he would help an offense that ranked just 27th in scoring in 2024. In actuality, the unit took a step back as it handed the keys over to rookie quarterback Cam Ward: at the time of Callahan’s firing, Tennessee ranked 31st in points scored per game and near the bottom of the league in several other categories.
Whether or not the change at head coach will bring immediate improvement remains to be seen. At the very least it will bring an element of the unknown to Sunday’s game.
“There’s no way to know,” Vrabel said. “You can watch the tape, understand some of the players, the play style and however they call the game, they’ll call the game.”
