After firing head coach Brian Callahan on Monday, the 1-5 Titans will move forward with Mike McCoy handling the role on an interim basis. It’s improbable that McCoy will fare well enough to take over on a full-time basis, meaning the Titans’ head coach for 2026 is likely to come from outside the organization. With that in mind, Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy and Steelers OC Arthur Smith are early names to watch, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com reports.
While the Titans hired a first-time head coach in Callahan, they’d be getting an experienced option in Nagy, who was at the helm of the Bears from 2018-21. Chicago went 12-4 and earned a playoff berth in Nagy’s first year on the job, though that proved to be the high point. The Bears also made the playoffs in 2020 despite an 8-8 finish, their second straight .500 effort, but a 6-11 showing in 2021 led to Nagy’s ouster. He put together a 34-31 record and an 0-2 mark in the postseason during his time with the franchise.
[RELATED: Titans Separate From Bill Callahan, Keep Bo Hardegree As Play-Caller]
After his run with the Bears ended, Nagy went back to Kansas City for his second Chiefs tenure. He has worked in multiple offensive positions since rejoining the team in 2022, including as their O-coordinator since 2023.
The Chiefs have gone to three straight Super Bowls and won two with Nagy back on their staff. However, head coach Andy Reid – not Nagy – calls the plays. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that the 47-year-old Nagy has a connection to Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi, who worked in various roles with the Chiefs from 2009-24.
The Titans and their fans are familiar with Smith, a Tennessee native who held multiple coaching roles with the team from 2011-20. Smith parlayed a successful two-year run as the Titans’ offensive coordinator into his first head coaching job with the Falcons. It proved to be a short-lived stint, however, with the Falcons moving on after Smith guided three straight 7-10 seasons.
In his first year with the Steelers in 2024, Smith oversaw an offense that ranked 16th in points and 21st in yards while struggling to find an answer at quarterback between Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. This year’s Steelers have gotten better play under center from Aaron Rodgers and rank 14th in the league in points per game, but they’re just 29th in yards per contest.
While Nagy and Smith may be prominent in the Titans’ coaching search, the team is unlikely to hire Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady, Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports reports. Brady, 36, has called the plays for Buffalo’s prolific offense since taking over for Ken Dorsey in 2023. However, after the Callahan experiment failed, there’s doubt that the Titans will hire a 30-something with no experience as a head coach for the second time in a row.
Only if they don’t want to make the playoffs again for the next decade lol. Unless someone offers them a massive overpay, I would not entertain any offers.
Unless Amy Adams Strunk decides to let those she hires actually do their jobs it won’t matter who they hire. She’s doing her best to copy the likes of Brown in Cincy and Jerruh in Dallas.
She just hired a GM in the offseason.
And how long will she stick with them? All the past several years wouldn’t be necessary if she didn’t fire Vrabel.
Maybe, but the team is also still recovering from Robinson’s last three drafts being so wildly unproductive.
If Vrabel wasn’t trying to take over the organization like Belichick, he wouldn’t have gotten fired.
Not a Titans fan but I would be very hesitant to hire Nagy who didn’t workout in Chicago as their next HC.
In 3 seasons, Nagy went 34-31 with 2 playoff trips, and with rookie turned career back up Mitch Trubisky as his QB. I’d like to hear why that was a “failure”. He’s worked with probably the best QB and HC in the NFL today, and helped win a few SBs. That’s better than what the Titans have fielded the last few years, and a better resume than some coordinators that are HCs right now.
Nagy, and Smith? What about their previous head coaching gigs would make Titan brass think they are the answer? Stop recycling previous failures.
I’m not saying h’d be top of my list, but I think Smith still has a chance to be a good head coach. He’s a good offensive mind and I don’t think anyone could win much of anything with Marcus Mariota, Taylor Heinicke, and Desmond Ridder as his quarterback group.
Smith is a good offensive mind? Maybe average at best, and certainly not creative like Ben Johnson, McVay, Payton, O’Connell, or Shanahan. TENN had a decent offense with Henry, Brown, and Tannehill, but I imagine most OCs would do the same with those players. True the QBs he had in ATL weren’t any good, but he didn’t anything special with what he had. Same in PITTS today.
Tannehill never looked like that guy until working with Smith. But to be clear, I never said he was an elite offensive coach like those guys you listed.
People are literally throwing out names because of ites. Nagy worked for the new GM in KC, and Arthur Smith started under Vrabel with the Titans. It won’t be either of them.
If Atlanta has more games like last night, Robinson is going to get a ton of interviews, including Tennessee.
I think Nagy made the playoffs twice. One year, they were 8-8.
Nagy? Good luck wit dat. LOL
Yeah, after hiring a non-playcalling OC that benefitted from an elite quarterback and good pass catchers (neither of which Tennessee has), I suppose that they’ll hire another, according to this.
Well he did such a fantastic job with Trubisky he would be the first name that people would think of right? Baaaa Haaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Stop it you’re killin me!
@uncle mike1526. Can’t polish a turd is that on nagy or the gm. You can wash your face still has poo on it. like you saying will fries wasn’t a overpay with a 58.8 grade on pff.
I mean Trubisky just sucked and shouldn’t have gone top of a draft. His numbers when he left Nagy and Chicago were like 2:1 TD to int ratio, and he had like 95 TDs. Nagy’s biggest problem was that Fangio somehow got an HC job out of the blue after year one and he never recovered with a similar hire for his DC. People forget that they should have beaten the Eagles that year but the kicker missed a chip shot, and then they went on to win the Super Bowl.
Trubisky has started 7 games since he left Chicago after the 2020 season. His Td:INT ratio is not 2:1, 10 touchdowns to 11 picks from 2021 to the present.
@twoston. I read it as trubisky was 2:1 at the time. Also took it as a loose statement because he didn’t say stats to back it up.
Yep. It was the definition of numbers can lie sometimes.
I said when he left Chicago it was 2 to 1. I remember because some fan bases were trying to talk themselves into him when you looked at his numbers on paper.
@realfootballfan. I remember parkey. Apparently the nfl doesn’t. He’s not getting brought in for auditions.
No one could’ve coached up Trubisky. He was arguably THE rawest QB to come out of college. He is what he is, never got his accuracy down, but is big, atheletic, and has a strong arm. A back up NFL QB. You can’t put any of that on Nagy. In hindsight Nagy did a good job with him to get to the playoffs 2 out of 3 years.
Valid point about Trubisky, but as for Tennessee, it would be insane to me to hire a non-playcalling OC immediately after doing so just before. It’s not necessarily about Nagy himself, I’d say. It’s just that-if they do hire Nagy-if it doesn’t work then it looks extra bad because they just tried that experiment with Callahan.
He’s actually called them though. It’s how he got the Chicago job because he took over play calling his last year in KC because they were in a slump, and then he obviously called them in Chicago. It was one of the few times Reid has passed the duty off to one of his OCs.
Yeah, Nagy’s not a rah rah guy, but he was an above average NFL HC who deserves another shot. He did what he could with a front office miss on QB. A lot of these coaches can’t even make it work as well as he did where he basically hid him as much as he could once he saw his limitations. Like this was the #3 pick in the draft, not some mid round flyer. Trubisky started a year in college, which should have been a red flag, but Chicago was scared Cleveland would take him, which would have been another in the long line of bad QB picks for them. Funny thing is that Hue Jackson is seemingly the only reason that didn’t happen as he stood on the table for Garrett over him with his analytics front office who wanted to take Trubisky.
Can’t argue with that. I think you’re correct. It’s just that it’d be hard to justify the hire with the past history if it doesn’t work. After all, Nagy did make a lot of mistakes in Chicago, even if I’d say that he deserves a second chance.
Get rid of the backstabbing Brinker and let Morganzi do his job.
I’m hearing rumors that arty! is campaigning hard to get Belichick back into the NFL 🙂