NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The Titans lacked talent last year, sure. But too often, the players they fielded committed too many penalties, allowed too many negative plays to unfold and gave the ball away too much to give themselves a chance.
Those would seem to be hard things to address in the early stages of offseason work, like now in Phase Two, when the offense can’t work against the defense and things are specific to positions and units.
But Brian Callahan and the Titans have divided the roster into eight teams, mixing up position groups from both sides of the ball to enhance bonding throughout the team, doling out points for the good and docking points for the bad. Each team has a captain and an alternate, helping create additional leadership opportunities. Unknown rewards await the ultimate winners, and there will be consequences for the losers in tone-setting work that Callahan hopes will solve some of 2024’s issues. Standings and trends are
posted on TV screens around the facilities.
Amani Hooker can grab an interception when the offense and defense start going against each other next week, gaining his team three points. The quarterback who threw the pass is docked three points. (If they are teammates, the points will cancel each other out.) Post-practice competitions like tug-of-war and rock-paper-scissors are also part of the game, and the team has posted videos showing how amped up the guys get around those events.
It’s telling how much they are fueled by competition that guys don’t even know what is at stake and it still means a great deal to them.
“I’m a competitive guy,” said Pollard, who captains a team with T'Vondre Sweat as his alternate. “As long as I heard it was teams and points involved, I knew it was my job to get as many points and try to win.”
Callahan surely knew he’d get that sort of reaction. He told us as this press session dispersed, that guys definitely don’t want to lose.
He’s a smart guy who had a miserable first year as an NFL head coach. I’ve thought since season’s end that he’d do an excellent job of assessing his first-year failures and do a very good job his second time around and adjusting his approach.
This is not the most important part of that, but it’s not at all insignificant.
“I reflected really hard on what I wanted the offseason to look like,” he said. “It is definitely structured much different, in terms of what we’re emphasizing and how we’re emphasizing it. How we set up our competition amongst our team, how we’re going about the team-building process, all of those things have changed a little bit for me. Focusing a lot more on the things that win and lose you football games as the end of the day.”
“The penalties, the negative plays, the turnovers, those are the things we’re focused heavily on. Try to make sure we do a better job executing those are the things we are focused heavily on and trying to make sure we do a better job executing those things in the moment. Definitely changed a little bit of the philosophy and the formula and hopefully that pays off for us.
In meetings, the Titans are spending a lot of time on what went wrong, the technique of how things must be done for them to go right, and creating a hyper-awareness of these things.
“You emphasize it like crazy,” Callahan said.
Out of this, a team in search of fresh leadership with a ton of new players also creates opportunities for some of that direction to emerge. The mini-teams get together for chats where they discuss Four Hs to get to know each other on a deeper level: Heroes, history, heartbreaks and hopes.
“I think it’s a good way for guys to learn each other, mix, be cohesive within different position groups and stuff like that,” Dan Moore said. "Offensive linemen specifically hang with offensive linemen. Being able to interact with other positions even on the defensive side of the ball and being able to compete together, I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve gotten from it all.
Of the #Titans' current roster of 91, 48 (53%) are in their first year with the team -- Nine draft picks, 34 free agents and five acquired on waivers.
— Paul Kuharsky (@PaulKuharskyNFL) May 20, 2025
“They are all accountable to each other on that (mini-)team,” Callahan said. “There is leadership that starts to grow because each team has a captain and an alternate, now you have more people in leadership spots. One of the things unique about the process is to allow those guys to start to find their own voices. It’s not about an offense versus defense. It’s much more of a holistic team approach….
"I don’t think leaders just walk into a room ready to lead. I think the are skills you have to learn. You have to have communication as a leader, you have to know your teammates. We spend a lot more time trying to get to know each other on a level I think is going to be beneficial to fostering more leadership for more people.
Callahan is not big on the standard answer people give when asked about their leadership style – that they lead by example.
That's expected, he said, that's their jobs, it's basically in their contract.
"My challenge to our team this year was to do more of the things that require bringing people with you, making other people better," 
Leadership is something that we talk a lot about. It's a focal point of our offseason. And the idea is that you develop a team full of leaders. Everyone has different styles. But the more people you have that are comfortable in those roles and understand that it's more about how you interact with people and how you make people around you better, that part of it is something I am excited about."
Another change: The locker room has been shuffled and players are not grouped by units. Tony Pollard is between Keondre Coburn and L’Jarius Sneed. Cody Barton is between Sebastian Joseph-Day and Darrell Baker.
Barton is on his fourth team in four years and says the setup has given him a chance to do more in the leadership department early on.
“It’s growing the culture and the camaraderie," he said, "within that individual separate team and that whole team."
