Titans coaching staff trending at an alarming rate towards be labeled a “mistake”

ORCHARD PARK -- The Tennessee Titans (1-5) are a laughing stock, and not just because their latest loss was a 34-10 ass-kicking at the hands of the Buffalo Bills (5-2).

A team that sold its fan base and the NFL at large on a new era of offensive football in Tennessee hit the nail on the head.

The Titans just expected that new era to be better, not worse.

Titans New Coaching Staff Looks Like A Mistake

Coach Brian Callahan and his staff were brought in to maximize quarterback play for this franchise.

Fans were tired of Mike Vrabel and running Derrick Henry into the ground, and welcomed the change with open arms. Even the most strident of detractors would have a difficult time arguing against the personnel additions and logic behind bringing Callahan in this offseason. They checked all the right boxes on paper.

How could it have all failed this badly through seven weeks?

"We went backwards on offense," Callahan said after the defeat in Buffalo. "We had penalties, we had a million issues. Quarterback hits, all those things. Not good enough. Defensively, I think they scored on every possession in the second half. That's a really good football team, and we didn't do a good enough job to do anything in the second half worthwhile. It's frustrating."

As promising as the 10-0 early lead was against the Bills, it felt like a house of cards waiting for Buffalo to wake up and kick it in.

Two fourth down calls seemed to crystalize just how far away this team feels from playing confident, aggressive football. On Tennessee's third offensive possession, quarterback Mason Rudolph drove the offense 61 yards in 13 plays to the Buffalo 7-yard line. Callahan opted to kick the field goal in that situation instead of what seemed like an obvious go-for-it on 4th-and-3 in a hostile road environment.

The Titans clung to a 10-7 lead heading into halftime with 13 first downs to 3 for the Bills, slight optimism and 217 yards of net offense.

Second-Half Woes Continue To Plague The Titans

Callahan's offense flopped, again.

The only drive longer than four plays for Tennessee came when the game was already out of reach with just over nine minutes to play in the fourth quarter. That 12-play, 50-yard drive ended in a Damar Hamlin interception. They managed only 72 total yards in the final two frames and that was with the Bills defense sagging to allow the clock to run.

The turning point of the game came on the first possession of the third quarter, when Callahan did elect to go for it on 4th and 2.

That decision, however, was from the Titans own 44-yard line. Running back Tony Pollard was stuffed for a loss of three, and the Bills promptly took six plays to drive the 41 yards for a touchdown and a lead they would not relinquish. Buffalo would continue on to score 34 unanswered points.

Recent history would tell us that Tennessee cannot keep pace in the second half of games.

In six contests, they have managed only 43 total second-half points in 2024. Only 12 points have been managed in fourth quarters alone this year. We continue to see Callahan and his staff be tested with next to no results to show for it. One cannot help but wonder if the bill of goods we were all sold before the season began isn't trending in the direction of a terrible mistake.

"It feels really, really good at the Tennessee Titans practice facility these days," team president Burke Nihill said in a training camp appearance this summer on 104.5 The Zone . "There is a definitely a freshness. Brian Callahan...you can do all your research on somebody, you can get references, you can do hours of upon hours of interviews with someone, but you don't really know completely what you have until someone gets in the building. I think that's true of a marketing position, an accounting position but when you're talking about a head coach, it's really, really important that you have a good recruiting process and make a wise decision. Since Brian got here, we thought that we got this right...we crushed it."

The only thing the Titans have crushed this year is their fan base's interest in them.

The team they put together does not have any chemistry. The coaching staff they "crushed" looks lost at times in-game and has zero answers on how to stop the bleeding. Callahan can grow and learn from this particular misery in the future. He does not have to be defined by the first seven weeks of his head coaching career.

As several league sources put it today via text, however: Would Mike Vrabel be 1-5 with a team like this?

Related: Titans' Mason Rudolph starting for an injured Will Levis is an opportunity for Buffalo to pounce

Featured Image: Mark Konezny-Imagn Images .