All the Tennessee Titans had to do was control the ball and not make any mistakes. If that had happened, they probably would’ve left Chicago with a Week 1 win, officially starting the Brian Callahan era off on the right foot.
Instead, with the Titans on the verge of blowing a three-score lead, second-year quarterback Will Levis imploded. That might be an understatement.
In the fourth quarter, the signal-caller threw a careless game-losing pick-six to the Chicago Bears’ Tyrique Stevenson, where his mid-play surrender cobra was very fitting.
On Monday, in his recap press conference, Callahan did not mince words about what went wrong for Tennessee. While he was still mostly supportive of Levis’ growth and maintained that he’d continue coaching and developing him, Callahan also said that he specifically told Levis to protect the ball in the fourth quarter — a basic task he failed at.
Callahan’s summary of the conversation was even more brutal because of how he thought the rest of the Titans played:
Titans HC Brian Callahan:
“If we’d just punted on 1st & 10 every time, we might’ve won the game”
😬😬😬
— AtoZ Sports Nashville (@AtoZSports) September 9, 2024
Oh. Oh, my goodness.
That’s not necessarily just a shot at Levis, as the rest of the Tennessee offense struggled in the second half. The Bears blanked the Titans to close the game. Even still, Levis is the person most in control of the offense and, effectively, the outcome when his team has a huge lead.
I don’t know how correct Callahan’s assessment is. The Titans had Caleb Williams hemmed in so well that they really might have won with extremely harmless punts for an entire half. But that’s not the point. If this is tough-love coaching, no one’s going to remember any of the positives of Levis’s game.
Instead, they’ll note that Callahan didn’t wear his kid gloves while essentially blaming his quarterback for the game’s outcome. Not a great start in Nashville, to say the least.
