The Tennessee Titans finally bit the bullet and fired Brian Callahan after just 23 games serving as the head coach of the franchise. Setting a 4-19 record in that timespan, his winning percentage was the fourth-worst among all head coaches of the 21st century. Despite drafting Cam Ward with the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, the team was going nowhere, with the offense barely resembling a functioning unit.
Going 1-5 through the first six weeks of the season, their lone victory came against the Arizona Cardinals, where it felt like the Cardinals gift-wrapped them a win. As a result, the Callahan axing felt inevitable, with the only real question about the timing of the move.
However, according to a veteran analyst, the move could have been prevented if the Titans had done just one thing differently, and that is draft Shedeur Sanders over Ward.
Could Shedeur Sanders Save Brian Callahan?
Failing to inspire confidence on either side of the football, Tennessee was one of the worst teams in all of football, barring none. Ranked dead last on PFSN’s Offense Impact, they weren’t much better on the other end, where they finished in the bottom-10 on Defense Impact.
That reflected poorly on Ward, who had 1,101 passing yards through six games, while throwing just three touchdowns and giving up four interceptions. As a result, he was second-to-last in the entire league on QBi, with Jake Browning the only starter behind him.
According to legendary sports media analyst Skip Bayless, though, the fault lay with the rookie quarterback rather than the head coach. On the latest episode of The Arena, his new show alongside NBA star Gilbert Arenas, Bayless explained his rationale.
“If they had picked Shedeur instead of Cam,” he began, “I don’t think this would have happened. That’s how good Shedeur is. He has the charisma factor, the ‘It’ factor to change the franchise and inspire the defense as well as the offense.”
Bayless has tried to make the case for Sanders ever since the second-generation star declared for the 2025 NFL Draft. But the league collectively believed he wasn’t that special as a talent.
As a result, he fell to the fifth round, where he was picked by the Cleveland Browns, where he spent the first five weeks of the season as the third-string quarterback behind Joe Flacco and Dillon Gabriel.
Last week, after they traded Flacco to the Cincinnati Bengals, the son of two-time Super Bowl champion Deion Sanders was elevated to the QB2 role. But so far, the Browns have shown an unwillingness to give him the ball.
With the organization employing him not taking a chance on him, it is hard to imagine that Sanders is as good as Bayless is trying to make him out to be.