The ugly, unpopular truth about Titans offensive ‘progress’ made under Bo Hardegree and Mike McCoy

Have the Tennessee Titans gotten any better since firing Brian Callahan? Or perhaps more to the point, has Cam Ward and this offense gotten any better since moving on from their offensive coach?

It’s a question that naturally crops up on a regular basis ever since the decision was made following Week 6. And the first place you’d think to look is scoring. How many points have they put on the scoreboard before and after the move?

Doing that basic math, this is what it comes out to. 13.8ppg in six games under Callahan, and 14.5ppg in six games under interim Mike McCoy. So that settles it, right? Wrong.

When we take a look under the hood, just one simple layer deeper, it quickly becomes clear how misleading this is. And it’s representative of something that I think is just the truth at this point: the Titans really messed this up.

The Titans’ scoring offense has declined since Callahan

Let’s break this up by what actually matters: offensive scoring, and playcalling. First, let’s remove a Cody Barton pick-six (good job, defense) and two Chimere Dike punt return touchdowns (good job, special teams). And then we’ll break it up into games called by Callahan (W1-3) and by Hardegree (W4-13). Here’s what you get:

• Callahan- 17ppg
• Hardegree- 10.9ppg

And we can subdivide it one layer deeper. Here’s Callahan playcalling (W1-3), Hardegree playcalling under head coach Callahan (W4-6), and Hardegree playcalling under interim McCoy (W7-13):

• Callahan- 17ppg
• Hardegree (Callahan)- 10.7ppg
• Hardegree (McCoy)- 11ppg

Points are just one (rather important!) snapshot of an offense. And I was less enthused by the opportunities I saw on the tape during Callahan’s play-calling to start the year as compared to how I felt in 2024. But Hardegree is notably, unequivocally worse at this if you ask me. There are plenty of additional measures we could look at here, such as total yards, redzone efficiency, EPA/play, etc. But nearly a touchdown difference in actual points put on the board by the offense each game reflects what I’m seeing with my eyes: clunkier play-calling and players often succeeding despite it. Much of the most memorable, successful Titans plays from the past couple months came outside of the structure of the play itself.

You don’t have to have liked what Callahan was doing to realize the move to Hardegree was a mistake. As it turns out, the guy whose offense this actually is (and whose father largely orchestrated the run scheme) was better equipped to call it the right way than two new guys in those positions. And before we go criticizing such a small sample size for Callahan here, let’s not forget that he got the first three starts of a rookie QB’s career, without the starting RT, against the Broncos, Rams and Colts.

When I polled Twitter on this, it was relatively split. 52% of nearly 1200 people felt Hardegree was at least a hair better at this than Callahan (though the vast majority agreed he’s still bad at it). Only 9% felt he’s be outright worse. Well, count me amongst them.

I’ll ask it again: What’s the point of firing a head coach in-season?

There are different reasons behind each case. Sometimes the message a head coach is preaching starts to be lost on a locker room. When the roster is out on a guy, you have to move on. Other times, a guy is such a bad manager that it’s actively harmful to his team. For my money, those are the only two legitimate reasons for pulling the trigger before the end (or very near the end) of the season to get a jump on the next hiring cycle.

But that doesn’t stop owners and front offices from pulling the trigger early anyways. The cold hard truth a lot of the time is that the public pressure and sick feeling that compounds with each loss becomes too much to bear. This is, of course, what dysfunctional organizations let drive their decision-making. But it does happen. The irresistible voice screaming “well we have to try something!” beats out patience and logic.

The Titans were foolish to take playcalling away when they did, and they were foolish to fire the head coach when they did. They should have waiting until the end of the year or until the locker room gave up on him—whichever came first—and wiped the full slate clean then. Instead, they’ve chosen a far messier path in which they’ve further tarnished their (Amy Adams Strunk’s) reputation of volatility, at best changed absolutely nothing about the trajectory of their team, and at worse done legitimate harm to the development of this roster.

If you ask me, it’s been a masterclass in what not to do. And I feel pretty good about the team itself, in their heart of hearts, agreeing with that in hindsight.