Getting shutout by Texans put Amy Adams Strunk in an impossible spot as Brian Callahan’s future with Titans is on life support

The Tennessee Titans went into Houston needing a competitive outcome against the 0-3 Texans. What they got was a 26-0 drubbing at the hands of an uninspiring division rival, a performance rife with dysfunction new and old.

Every leak this team plugs seems to spring two new holes. If I’d told you before kickoff the Titans would allow two sacks, get two sacks of their own, and commit just five penalties, we all would have collectively felt pretty good about their chances. But then your kicker forgets how to hit chip shots, your quarterback holds the ball increasingly too long, receivers still cannot make a play, and the defense makes it their personal mission to give up as many comically-long down and distance conversions as possible. And just like that: a blowout, shutout loss.

I wrote at the end of last week what would need to happen in Houston for Brian Callahan’s job to actually be in immediate jeopardy, and explained what I know about this franchise’s mindset at the top right now. After what transpired in Week 4, we need to revisit those things.

Brian Callahan Avoided One Disaster, But Stepped Into Another

Here is a snippet of what I wrote going into the game about Callahan’s standing with ownership and executive leadership:

“Believe it or not, the mindset of ownership and this executive leadership group remains largely the same as what it was before the games began: continuity is king. They still really do not want to fire Brian Callahan. And they really, really do not want to fire him now in-season. They’ll do it if they feel they have no choice, and that’s where coaching management this weekend is critical. If Brian Callahan becomes the story in three of the Titans first four games, then anything is on the table come Monday morning.”

Is Brian Callahan the story this morning? Well in a game management sense, he is not. That was the biggest landmine he could have stepped on this weekend, and he avoided it. But we’re still talking about him today anyways. He’s the topic of every show in town, and the national media have begun throwing their two cents in about Callahan’s eventual demise. It seems an 0-4 start is the annual all-call for coaching change columns.

The reason Callahan is the story today despite a game free of catastrophic management mishaps is because of what I laid out next in that article last week:

“But if the Titans handle situational football well, the team puts up a decent fight against a stout Texans defense and doesn’t get blanked, then there isn’t going to be any coaching change news on Monday morning.”

The one thing this team couldn’t afford, besides another management fiasco, was an offensive no-show. They didn’t put up a decent fight, and they did get blanked.

The “If” Vs “When” Of A Coaching Change In Tennessee

Does that mean a coaching change this week is a certainty? No. I’ve been given no reason (at the time of writing this early Monday morning) to think a coaching change is imminent on Monday, or anytime this week for that matter. I feel better about the Monday part, and much worse about Tuesday and beyond. Historically, Amy Adams Strunk has done her firing on Tuesdays. But when she fired Mike Vrabel, there was no Monday head coach press conference. Brian Callahan’s 1:30pm presser is expected to take place as scheduled, and it would feel strange and disjointed if he held his presser and then got fired afterwards.

Ultimately, this last portion of my pregame article explains the rub here: 

“…the people who actually make these decisions aren’t in a rush to go firing anybody yet unless more disasters take place. They spent all summer saying this season isn’t really about wins and losses, and they meant it.”

In case it doesn’t go without saying, we’ve officially reached the point where a coaching change is a question of “when” and not “if”. To deny that is to deny the facts on the ground. If I’m wrong and a change comes this week, you won’t see me acting surprised. If it comes two weeks from now, or six, or after a miserable season comes to a close; I won’t be surprised then either. And I’m not naive enough to forget that it’s possible a full 13 games left on the schedule changes the trajectory of this team in some way. That’s a lot of football left on the schedule, no matter who is at the helm.

The question of “when” really is a tricky one to me. Measuring the two options here is getting impossibly hard. On one hand, there’s the real-time impact of the current coaching staff on the dysfunction and arguable decay of this roster. On the other, there’s the ineffectiveness of a coaching change on this roster in 2025 and the damage of such an early change for Cam Ward.

It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation that constitutes this franchise’s worst nightmare coming true.