There we have it, the first coaching casualty of 2025. My money was on Mike McDaniel in Miami, but the Tennessee Titans pulled the trigger first.

Tennessee has been bad, terrible even. There’s an argument to be made that they’re the worst team in the NFL, despite the New York Jets being the only winless team through six games.

The Titans lone win was the result of an epic collapse by the Arizona Cardinals, and two of the strangest plays you’ll ever see. In every other game, Tennessee has been almost completely uncompetitive.

As a Bears fan, I know exactly where the Titans are right now. They have a rookie, number one overall pick quarterback. Cam Ward is the franchise, everything Tennessee does has to be about maximizing his development and potential. When you come to the decision, as an organization, that the head coach is not the right guy to develop your prized quarterback, you have to get him out of the building without hesitation.

Ward is now the fourth consecutive number one overall pick quarterback to have his head coach fired midway through his rookie season. Trevor Lawrence, Bryce Young & Caleb Williams have all been where Cam Ward now is.

Ward and the Titans most closely resemble the situation with Chicago and Caleb Williams last year. Whereas Jacksonville & Carolina paired their prized rookie quarterbacks with new coaches and just chose the wrong ones, in the eyes of those respective organizations. Tennessee and Chicago, however, chose to retain their head coaches with the full knowledge that they’d be drafting a quarterback with the first overall pick.

The difference between Tennessee and Chicago is that in Chicago GM Ryan Poles had hired Matt Eberflus, in Tennessee GM Mike Borgonzi did not hire Brian Callahan. While I am not excusing Poles and the Bears not recognizing sooner that Eberflus was the wrong coach to pair with a prized rookie quarterback, perhaps there was loyalty and continuity concerns at play.

In Tennessee, those excuses don’t exist. Did ownership force Borgonzi to retain Callahan and not make his own choice for head coach? If so, that is just organizational malfeasance.

I hope, for Cam Ward’s sake, that Tennessee gets it right with their next head coach. I hope they give Borgonzi and his pick for head coach an ample chance to prove they can develop Ward and turn Tennessee around.