Titans' Job Security Check-In

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Sunday’s loss to the Jaguars was the first time during Brian Callahan’s very rough first season as the Titans coach after which I really wondered if he’s up for the job.
 
I’ve had questions throughout the season about game management, play-calling and player growth. But I’ve thought, at his core, he’s a capable guy who maybe got the job a little early and needs some time to grow into it while working with a roster that was poorly assembled by Ran Carthon, who has a great degree of culpability in what’s unfolding.

Brian Callahan
Brian Callahan/ Angie Flatt

 

For a short period, things seemed to be progressing for the team, and that was a big gauge for me – would a bad team with a lot of new parts and a new system with an inexperienced coach and defensive coordinator show steady progress? 

But “better” losses to the Chargers and Vikings and an upset of the Texans on the road in the Amy Adams Strunk Super Bowl have been washed away with two horrific performances: a 42-10 loss at Washington where the Titans were down four touchdowns in 20 minutes and Sunday’s weak showing against what had been the worst team in the NFL.

We heard about how the team regained its balance to compete in the second half in DC and Callahan opened his post-game press conference after the Jacksonville loss by telling us there were “a lot of positive things.” Later he tried to save that by acknowledging that “no one gives a shit anyway” about positives in the setting of such a loss.
 
Monday he reset that further, saying if the Titans had executed three or four plays, they’d have won 20-10. That’s true. But coaches of teams that lose NFL games can say that weekly. Callahan should have his team at a place where the quarterback is seeing the open tight end in the end zone when he’s the second read and the star receiver isn’t running out of bounds short of the first-down marker on third down.
 
Callahan, his players and the organization as a whole just seem to lack a feel for how to put things together and produce in big situations. 

 Those red-zone plays and the overall red-zone production are a perfect example.
 
The Titans are finding touchdowns 47.06 percent of the time the cross the opponents’ 20-yard line. Last year’s miserable team, the one Callahan was hired to fix, scored 47.92 percent of the time. (The 2019 Titans who lost the AFC Championship game hit at a 77.36 rate.)
 
These Titans are at their best when they make the red zone irrelevant. In Houston, they got a 38-yard TD from Nick Westbrook-Ikhine and a 70-yard catch and run for a score from Chig Okonkwo.
 
The defense was good, but couldn’t get the one key stop at the key moment, a season theme. Next up are the Bengals. The Titans' offense may do more because Cincinnati is a bad defense (so was Jacksonville) and Callahan knows much of it intimately as that’s where he came from. What makes this worse is the Bengals were scoring 27.9 points a game before their Monday Night Game at Dallas.
 
The one thing the Titans offense does well with some regularity is run the ball with Tony Pollard, yet on three chances from the Jaguars’ 2-yard line Callahan didn’t call a run.
 
You’d think he’d be looking for simple answers, but he overcomplicated things there, and it’s not the first time. 
 
“I don’t think about that part of it, I wouldn’t say I’m ‘Coaching for my job,’” Callahan said. “I’m trying to do the very best I can at every possible moment of the week, of the day to out ourselves in position to be a successful football team, to win football games. Outside of that, I don’t control any of that.” 
 
Meanwhile, the impact of Carthon’s 11 veteran additions of note acquired as free agents or in trades has been far below expectations. For $180.68 million guaranteed, the Titans have gotten steady production from Pollard, explosive plays with scattered big mistakes from Calvin Ridley, expected coverage struggles from Kenneth Murray, minimal participation from L’Jarius Sneed and Chido Awuzie because of injuries and short seasons from Lloyd Cushenberry and Quandre Diggs, who suffered serious injuries in their eighth games.
 
Letting Carthon cook is not a reason for optimism, particularly as the Titans head toward another draft minus a third-round pick. 
 
I’m big on luck being a big factor in many injuries.
 
But part of Chad Brinker’s pledge has been to reduce the injury risk to which the Titans expose themselves and a plague of injuries was on the list of reasons things fell apart for Mike Vrabel.
 
Where’s the hope? What’s the direction?
 
Continuity is the best selling point. And it’s a good one.

Replace Callahan and the next guy inherits a job where Vrabel was fired for doing very well when he had a decent roster and suffering when it dried up and where Callahan will have had only one season. Guys will want the job, sure, it’s one of only 32. But not the best guys, who will be wary of Strunk and job security, and that guy would have the same issue hiring a staff.
 
The Titans’ best course is to let him grow, to remind themselves, and him, of the reasons they hired him. For him to conduct a thorough autopsy on the season.
 
And for Carthon and Brinker, further along in their tenures, to step it up and provide him with a lot more.