Three weeks into the season, Brian Callahan's seat in Tennessee is toasty.
After falling to 0-3 with a 41-20 blowout loss to division rival Indianapolis, Callahan is 3-17 as the head coach. Trailing 20-6 at halftime, home fans booed and began to chant "Fire Callahan!" as the team headed to the locker room.
"I don't really worry about that, to be honest," Callahan said after the game, via ESPN. "My focus is on trying to make sure our football team is in as good a place as possible and the rest of that stuff is what it is. I don't think about those things, and you really can't. I mean this is hard enough as it is to put those other things and think about that. It doesn't do anybody any good. So, I just go to work and work as hard as I can. I put as much effort as I can into this and that is what it is."
Throughout the contest, CBS cameras repeatedly showed frustrated fans in the stands exasperated at Callahan's team.
During his short tenure, Callahan has made numerous in-game errors. Sunday's most egregious one came in the final minute of the second quarter.
The Titans faced a fourth-and-1 at the Colts' 39-yard line with 46 seconds left in the first half. Following an Indy timeout to stop the clock, Callahan doubled down with another timeout, without even attempting to get the Colts to jump offsides first. The Titans were waffling between going for it or kicking a field goal. The indecision led to confusion on the sideline about whether a kicking ball should be in play. Ultimately, the Titans took a delay of game penalty, pushing a 57-yard attempt to a 62-yarder, which Joey Slye missed.
"I hadn't decided yet at the moment what we're going to do," Callahan said. "We were going back and forth and wanted a minute to think about it. I was going back and forth between the fourth-down call and the field goal and decided to go take points in that particular situation, and the operational part of it to kick it on time didn't happen."
The Colts then took the ball the other way, 30 yards in 34 seconds, to add to their lead. It was a completely avoidable six-point swing by the Titans' coaching staff.
Last year, the mistakes in Tennessee were excused by subpar quarterback play. With No. 1 pick Cam Ward flashing ability as he works through growing pains, the young QB is currently the only bright spot on the team. In that context, Callahan's miscalculations are magnified.
The question is how much patience the organization, which overhauled the front office in the offseason, will have with the second-year coach.
For his part, Ward lobbied for consistency and didn't fret about the boos.
"I'm not really too worried about that," Ward said about the boos. "We ain't do that enough to win the game today. If I was them, I'd be mad too. I'm trying to win football games the same as them. So, if that's what they're going to do, we've got to lock in as a group in the locker room and continue to motivate each other, push each other, and try to get a win."
