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3 reasons for excitement — and 3 big questions — as Tennessee Titans hire Brian Callahan
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- 3 reasons for excitement — and 3 big questions — as Tennessee Titans hire Brian Callahan
It's hard not to view the Tennessee Titans' Brian Callahan hire through the Will Levis lens .
The Titans are working to finalize a deal with Callahan , the Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator, to be the coach to replace Mike Vrabel , a source with direct knowledge of the situation informed The Tennessean on Monday night. Callahan is a quarterbacks coach by trade, having worked with superstars Peyton Manning , Matthew Stafford and Joe Burrow . Now he gets Levis heading into his second year after showing promise in nine starts as a rookie.
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Culture shock is inevitable. The Bengals passed on more than 60% of their offensive snaps in four of Callahan's five seasons Cincinnati. The last time the Titans threw the ball at least 60% of the time, Levis was a high school sophomore. Now Levis inherits a coach who builds around the pass as well as anyone in the league, one who was instrumental in developing Burrow and who will work alongside a front office to utilize nearly $80 million in cap space and a top-10 draft pick to win in Nashville.
Titans general manager Ran Carthon has repeatedly said he wants players who fit his coach's vision. It's hard to see a world where Callahan's vision doesn't consist of finding weapons for Levis that spice up the Titans' offense.
Here are six other quick-fire thoughts about the Callahan hire.
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Brian Callahan, Will Levis , input and variability
There's reason to believe Callahan will build an offense around Levis and the offense's strengths rather than trying to fit the Titans into the mold of what the Bengals did. The Bengals' offense wasn't a monolith. It changed throughout Callahan's tenure to fit personnel and, more importantly, as a reaction to the way defenses combatted the Bengals' strengths.
Cincinnati went from having one of the NFL's best and most frequent deep passing attacks in 2021 to ranking among the NFL's leaders in check downs, short passes and throws to running backs in 2022 and 2023. Star receivers Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins were still there. But the Bengals took what defenses gave them and found quite a bit of success doing so.
Talking to someone who knows the Bengals' QB room well Monday evening, a word that came up a lot was "input." Callahan, coach Zac Taylor and the rest of the offensive staff set Burrow up to thrive by giving him agency in the offense to do what worked for him. And when Burrow got hurt, the Bengals' offense continued to thrive with backup quarterback Jake Browning by letting him do what he did best.
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This has to be good for Tyjae Spears , right?
The days of giving Derrick Henry the ball 400 times a season are behind the Titans. In all likelihood, the days of giving Henry the ball at all are behind the team. Instead, second-year running back Tyjae Spears should get a chance to play the role Joe Mixon did in the Bengals' offense.
Mixon has carried an average of 253 times per season over the past three seasons. But he's also averaged more than 60 targets per season in the pass game. Spears was targeted 70 times through the air as a rookie but only carried 100 times. Spears is explosive, and it has yet to be seen how he'll react to carrying the load as a three-down running back, but given the similarity in Spears' profile to Mixon's, the analog feels obvious.
MORE ON RUNNING BACKS: With Mike Vrabel gone, it's hard to see Derrick Henry back with Tennessee Titans | Estes
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Well, remember Cincinnati's big weakness?
The one thing the Bengals never seemed to solve, even as the offense thrived, was its pass protection. The Titans' offensive line has been just as bad, if not worse, over the years. The Bengals functioned in spite of protection problems. Theoretically, the Titans can, too. It's enough to create a little bit of curiosity about what premium Callahan's Titans will put on fixing the offensive line versus acquiring talent across the board the way the Bengals did.
Are the Titans about to look a lot more NFC West?
Carthon worked with the San Francisco 49ers before coming to Nashville. Callahan is on a tangential branch of Rams coach Sean McVay's coaching tree, having worked under Taylor, McVay's former offensive coordinator. As former Rams and 49ers assistants continue to take over the league, it would make sense for Callahan to build his staff with like-minded disciples of the Shanahan-McVay tree. Especially since the Titans also interviewed Panthers offensive coordinator Thomas Brown, another one-time McVay assistant, and Texans offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik, a Shanahan protege, before making Callahan their top target.
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The Titans hired Brian Callahan awfully quick
Eight teams had coaching vacancies this offseason. The Titans were the third team to make a hire, and the first to make a hire that didn't involve promoting from within. Callahan reportedly had second interviews scheduled with the Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers , but the Titans got their guy before he could talk to anyone else. This sort of urgency means the Titans found a candidate they liked and grabbed him before anyone else could. Points for identifying something specific and snatching it. Time will tell if the Titans' decisiveness was wise or unwise, but for now, the Titans got the guy they wanted and prevented anyone else from having him.
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It's too soon to know what looms for Titans' defense
Callahan doesn't have a defensive background. More than half of the Titans' defensive starters are pending free agents. Until Callahan hires a defensive coordinator, it's futile trying to figure out what the Titans' defense is going to look like.
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Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com . Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Titans hire Brian Callahan: 6 thoughts on Mike Vrabel replacement
