The Tennessee Titans have fired their head coach, Brian Callahan, just hours after he publicly called out their star quarterback, Cam Ward.
The Titans announced Callahan’s termination on Monday, October 13, after a rough 1-5 start to the season. The organization has not announced an interim coach to replace Callahan, 41, at the time of publication.
“After extended conversations with our owner and general manager, we met with Brian Callahan this morning to tell him we are making a change at head coach,” Titans president of football operations Chad Brinker said in a statement. “These decisions are never easy, and they become more difficult when they involve people of great character. 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 statement continued, “While we are committed to a patient and strategic plan to build a sustainable, winning football program, we have not demonstrated sufficient growth. 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 meet that standard.”
Callahan’s firing comes after he criticized the performance of starting quarterback Cam Ward after the Titans’ 20-10 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday, October 12. The Titans drafted Ward, 23, with the No. 1 overall pick at April’s 2025 NFL Draft.
“I am incredibly discouraged by the outcome,” Callahan told reporters after the game. “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.”
Callahan added, “It’s not all just him, but he is a part of it and we’d like to be able to start seeing some more good football being played and we got to do a better job.”
The Titans loss to the Raiders was their fifth in six games to start the season, also falling to the Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Rams, Indianapolis Colts and Houston Texans. Their lone win of the season came against the Arizona Cardinals on October 5.
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Ward finished Sunday’s game against the Raiders 26 for 38 passing with 22 yards and an interception. He also lost two fumbles.
“Real disappointed, just as an offense, especially myself,” Ward told reporters after the game. “Any time you have three turnovers you are not going to have a chance to win the game.”
He added, “I know I can’t let it happen, but we have to keep going. At the end of the day, there’s no excuses out there for us. We just have to be better, and I have to be better.”
The Titans return to action on Sunday, October 19, when they host the New England Patriots.
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