If Brian Callahan’s desperate decision works, it’s a short-sighted fix that causes a new long-term Titans problem

A lose-lose scenario even if this works

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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The Tennessee Titans are headed to Houston to face the Texans in the Slopfest of The Week, a “loser leaves town” battle between two 0-3 football teams. Cam Ward and company on the offensive side of the ball will have their play calls coming in from a new voice on the sideline, as QB Coach Bo Hardegree is set to take over play-calling duties from Brian Callahan. Hardegree was the choice over Offensive Coordinator Nick Holz for ease of transition, since Hardegree has experience calling plays in the NFL already and is the one in Cam Ward’s ear on Sundays as it is. The rookie QB has been empowered early on to be a heavy influence in the offensive operation, and having his closest gameday advisor be the one sending him play calls makes a lot of sense in the short term.

Who knows how it will work out. I wrote more linked here about why I’m skeptical. But let’s say it’s a real success in 2025. If you begin to think down the road to this spring, it quickly becomes clear that this will create a new problem for Callahan in the near future.

Callahan In A Lose-Lose Situation, Facing A Potentially Brutal Choice

The whole idea here is to take play-calling off of Callahan’s in-game plate, giving him a lot more bandwidth to do his primary job: be the Head Coach. Game management issues have cropped up far too often at the beginning of this season, and this decision is supposed to allow Callahan to dial-in on his managerial duties. Hardegree improved the Raiders offense statistically when he took over for Josh McDaniels a couple seasons ago, and the hope is that he can have a net-positive impact on this group as they continue to develop and try to find some sort of a stride.

Callahan explained why he passed over Offensive Coordinator Nick Holz to hand the reigns to Hardegree this week, and that decision makes a lot of sense in the short term. Everybody you speak to about Holz says he does a great, vital job making this operation flow each week. He designs and installs the base offense, amongst many other things behind the scenes. He just doesn’t handle most most public-facing duty of many coordinators: playcalling. So fans regularly wonder aloud, “what does this guy even do around here?”

If this all works out for the Titans in 2025, though, it creates multiple new problems for Callahan. First of all, he’s in what I think is a lose-lose situation in the short term. If the offense starts to pick up in these first couple weeks of Hardegree calling plays, Hardegree is going to get the praise. If things continue to sputter, Callahan is still going to endure the brunt of the criticism. But it potentially gets worse for the head coach, even if things break well in the near-term. If Hardegree as the play-caller is deemed a success, the Titans show some improvement and collect some wins down the stretch, and Callahan survives the year, what happens then?

Now, some of you may be rolling your eyes at the idea of Callahan remaining the coach in 2026. Through three games… fair enough. But the reality remains that this ownership and executive leadership group values continuity for Cam Ward above all. And they do not want to fire Callahan. They will if they feel they have no choice, of course. And it’s not trending well at the moment. But 14 games remain on the schedule, and in the NFL, that’s an eternity to change the narrative.

So for the sake of the Hardegree situation, let’s say the best-case scenario for Callahan plays out. He survives. That would mean that this spring, he’s likely forced to make an extremely difficult choice. Hardegree was already a popular coaching riser this past offseason, interviewing for a couple different coordinator jobs. He was blocked from taking a job with Chicago by the Titans, which is a thing you can do when one of your coaches is offered a job that’s deemed a lateral move. For Hardegree, that would be anything that isn’t a full-blown coordinator position. But if he were offered an OC role, he could choose to take it.

If his play-calling in 2025 goes well, how much more popular do you think he’ll be for a coordinator role next spring? If you haven’t figured out the rub here yet, I’ll spell it out: Callahan probably won’t have the luxury of keeping his QB Coach as his play-caller. He’d have to either promote Hardegree to OC and move on from Holz, a guy Callahan has repeatedly said is invaluably helpful and does a great job, or say goodbye to Hardegree and have to go back to the drawing board for play-calling.

None of this is clean. Every scenario for Callahan right now feels messy, even the best cases.

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