Mike McCarthy seems to have answered a big question about the Titans head coach search in 2026

The earliest Titans head coaching connection is popping back up on the radar

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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The Tennessee Titans will head to Jacksonville this Sunday to play their final regular season game of the season, and then their search for Cam Ward’s next head coach begins. They’ve been gearing up to embark on this interview process for months at this point, and through it all we’ve heard tell of coaching candidate short lists. These national reports of who the Titans are interested in are often agent-driven and guesswork, but they’re a decent gauge of the coaching names with the most general buzz in the NFL anyways.

One of the very first and most prominent candidates connected to the Titans back in October when Brian Callahan was fired was former Cowboys and Packers head coach Mike McCarthy. But as the weeks passed and more confident short-lists were released, we saw his name fade into the background. That is, until this week as the turned the page to 2026.

Mike McCarthy is getting buzz again as a Titans head coach candidate

It isn’t hard to see how Mike McCarthy is an easy connection for the Titans. He’s available, and he has as many pelts on his wall as any prospective head coach in the cycle. He has a winning record of significant sample size, and he has a ring. He’s put together many double-digit win seasons and played in many playoff games. Why wouldn’t the Titans want to at least consider him to be the badly-needed floor raiser for their flailing organization?

That’s what we all thought in the initial aftermath of the job coming open. But as I wrote about in December, his name had faded. We weren’t seeing him mentioned in these reports of potential short list candidates. But three national reporters have brought him back up as the new year is upon on, reigniting the buzz around his candidacy.

His track record isn’t the only reason why he’s been connected to Tennessee, as CBS reporter Jonathan Jones pointed out in this recent article: “I would anticipate Chiefs OC Matt Nagy and former Packers and Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy to get long looks in Tennessee based off their relationships with Titans GM Mike Borgonzi (Nagy) and president of football operations Chad Brinker (McCarthy).”

The Titans hiring committee has expressed a strong commitment to neutrality as it pertains to prior relationships like McCarthy and Brinker, and they put their money where their mouth is this time last year when they passed on hiring Brinker’s friend and highly-qualified GM candidate Jon-Eric Sullivan. But no matter how objective you set out to be, an existing relationship is still going to count for something. What kind of relationship does Brinker have with McCarthy? I’m not sure. But they’ve spent time together at the very least.

Jones wasn’t the only national guy to mention Brinker recently. ESPN reporter Dan Graziano had this to say on McCarthy as a candidate in this coaching cycle: “The relative lack of top offensive candidates is the thing that makes me wonder whether Kingsbury gets some attention or even Mike McCarthy gets some looks, though I haven’t heard anything solid on teams being interested in the latter.” He may just be out of the loop right now on McCarthy, but him saying he hasn’t heard anything on him makes me wonder how much of McCarthy’s buzz is from his camp/agency pushing his name out there vs. how much is actually coming from interest amongst hiring teams.

In that same ESPN article, though, Jeremy Fowler shared his own different perspective on McCarthy’s next steps. “I would anticipate Chiefs OC Matt Nagy and former Packers and Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy to get long looks in Tennessee based off their relationships with Titans GM Mike Borgonzi (Nagy) and president of football operations Chad Brinker (McCarthy).”

So he singles out Tennessee in particular. Does this relationship mention from Fowler and Jones qualify as anything beyond dot-connecting logic? I can’t rule it out, thought the fact that his name had disappeared from the zeitgeist for some time and is now emerging this this way from two different national reporters makes me thing that at the very least, his camp is working to make it clear he has his hat in the ring.

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