Brian Callahan knows slow starts. How the Tennessee Titans offense can overcome vs Jets

Tennessee Titans coach Brian Callahan knows the playbook for enduring a slow start.

Callahan lost his first game as a head coach Sunday when his offense underperformed in a 24-17 loss to the Chicago Bears. This trajectory isn't exactly new for Callahan . As offensive coordinator Callahan's last two Bengals teams started 0-2 but finished with winning seasons, including the 2022 squad that went 12-2 in its next 14 games.

"You are constantly in the first part of the season evaluating what it is that you do well," Callahan said. "Once you kind of find what that identity is of your team, you lean into it. That is an ongoing process over the whole year, but usually in these first couple weeks you find out a lot of things. I think that you rely on people’s thoughts and ideas and viewpoints on their positions, on their units — offense, defense and special teams. You just have to be willing to be flexible and adaptable and not afraid to say, ‘What we thought we were going to be isn’t true and we need to do something different.’"

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Callahan says he and Bengals coach Zac Taylor's offense initially revolved around under-center formations and wide zone run plays before drafting quarterback Joe Burrow. When Burrow arrived, the scheme became a mix of those philosophies and the ones Burrow thrived with in college. But after some early struggles, the staff pivoted to more of a shotgun-first approach with gap-scheme run plays dominating the play sheet.

Callahan has only coached one game with these Titans , so he said he isn't ready to make grand proclamations about what's true and what isn't. But he is getting there.

"It’s still a process," Callahan said. "I have an idea of some of the things that I really like and things we do do well and we did well in the game. That was also one game plan against a different structure or style of defense. We’re going to keep continuing to see. I do have things that I learned about some guys over the course of that game that I didn’t maybe know prior to, and that’s a good thing and that can help me keep putting them in a better position."

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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: Brian Callahan knows slow starts. How the Tennessee Titans offense can overcome vs Jets