NASHVILLE, Tenn. – In 2023, the Cleveland Browns made a rare playoff appearance, just their second since 2002. Their remarkable 11-6 record came despite serious injuries on the offensive line, where they wound up starting 10 different players.
Particularly bad were their losses at tackle. Starting right tackle Jack Conklin (knee) played one game and his replacement, fourth-round rookie Dawand Jones (knee) played nine, with James Hudson starting the final seven.
On the left side, Jedrick Wills (foot) lasted nine games before Geron Christian played the final nine.
Offensive line coach Bill Callahan was coming off this magic season, where his patchworked line was in part responsible for allowing 45 sacks (12th) and a 6.7 percent sacks rate (tied for 16th) of an immobile QB (Joe Flacco) and helped produce the NFL’s 12th-best rushing attack when he joined his son Brian’s staff in Tennessee. It was a volume rush game -- 118.6 rush yards a game came on 3.9 yards a carry. Cleveland’s 2023 success was also buoyed by a top-tier defense and Flacco’s late-season heroics.
But the Browns' year and Callahan's fine track record brought hope to a team whose offensive line problems had grown.
In Nashville, Bill Callahan’s starters weren’t good in his first season and a revamped group hasn’t had success two
games into his second year, though it’s faced two very strong fronts. And his second dip into the depth pool has seen none of his good fortune from 2023, with Oli Udoh faring poorly stepping in for JC Latham (hip) at right tackle in Denver and John Ojukwu looking like a problem player against the Rams after he was the last-ditch alternative last year.
“I think it’s all circumstantial,” Brian Callahan said. “It’s hard to compare players in those spots. They had a pretty good makeup there, a good group of guys in Cleveland kind of one through nine. And we feel good about the guys we have. But to assume that everything is going to be just like it was somewhere else, for any of us that come from somewhere that had success, I think that’s hard to live up to. Because everything is different. But we expect those guys to come in and play well.”
From the end of last season, the Titans let go or jettisoned Daniel Brunskill, Dillon Radunz, Nicholas Petit-Frere, Jaelyn Duncan, Logan Bruss, Arlington Hambright and Isaiah Prince.
They added Blake Hance, Brenden Jaimes, Sam Mustipher, Udoh, fifth-rounder Jackson Slater, Brandon Crenshaw-Dickson and Clay Webb.
Their remaining depth on the 53-man roster now is Udoh, Hance, Slater and Corey Levin.
On the practice squad, they’ve kept Andrew Rupcich, Crenshaw-Dickson, Webb and Ojukwu.
Bill Callahan’s pre-Tennessee resume hasn’t changed.
Joe Panos, who played for him at Wisconsin and became an agent at Athletes First, told me when Bill Callahan arrived here that he would look to funnel young offensive linemen to him.
"If I have a guy that I need developed, a dude who's on the street who needs a job or an undrafted guy, I will 100 percent sell him to Callahan," Panos said in Feb. of 2024. "Because I know he can develop him.
“(Hjalte) Froholdt is a perfect example. I sell him to Cleveland. He's on the practice squad. He made the 53. Started playing. Started starting. And now he's the starting center for the Cardinals. Ask him. It's Bill Callahan who got him there. One hundred percent."
No one’s developed into a role-playing substitute here yet, or jumped off last year’s team to do so elsewhere.
In the starting lineup, Peter Skoronski has certainly grown, and hopes are high for Latham. But they are first-rounders. Lloyd Cushenberry and Dan Moore were each the highest-paid free agents at their position in the last two markets. Kevin Zeitler arrived as a highly-regarded 14-year veteran.
That collective has to move from a team weakness to a net-neutral at minimum.
And the depth?
In Cleveland, Christian started those nine games in 2023 and was at the very least functional for the Browns.
The Titans signed him in June of 2024, and he fought with the likes of Duncan and Ojukwu only to be released on Aug. 27. He made an impression on Bill Callahan when they were together in Washington, got his chance in Cleveland, but wasn’t good enough to be a supplemental piece in Nashville
Tennessee endured four starts at right tackle from Leroy Watson (another Callahan Clevelander), two from Duncan, and one from Ojukwu all in a search for a feasible replacement for Petit-Frere, who played very poorly after getting the job in camp.
There is no discernible progress, just a discussion of how league-wide depth at tackle is poor.
In 2023, Hudson, Christian and Jones committed one penalty every 146.5 snaps; In 2024 and 2025, Watson, Duncan and Ojukwu have committed one every 73.8. Lesser players, playing far less well are with far more mistakes.
Ojukwu dealt with early nerves, Nick Holz said, and needed to settle in at the start when he was flagged for a false start on the third play from scrimmage against the Rams. He got another one at 4:42 of the second quarter. They put the Titans in second-and-15 and third-and-13 and they didn’t get a first down following either infraction.
“I can be better, I need to do better for my team,” he said.
Regarding the penalties, he said, “My lack of focus, that’s on me. I know how Cam (Ward) does his cadence and everything and I’m the only one that jumped, so that’s on me."
I don’t think Bill Callahan had a good line to work with last season, and he probably had a hand in overestimating what he could do with players like Radunz, Petit-Frere, Watson, Ojukwu and Duncan.
A year later, he certainly helped the team turn to Moore, Hance, Zeitler and Slater we well as Udoh and others who couldn’t unseat Ojukwu. But deposed GM Ran Carthon and his replacement, Mike Borgonzi, ultimately own the inventory; Bill Callahan is responsible for the development and certainly has some constraints that are not ultimately of his making.
The interior depth is probably better than it is at tackle
But as many needs as the team had, how Chad Brinker, Mike Borgonzi, Brian Callahan and Bill Callahan didn’t stock this team with a better third tackle option after years of issues is hard to fathom.
“We know he coaches us hard, he’s going to let us know if we’re not doing the things that we’re supposed to do,” Ojukwu said. “Doing your job, it sounds simple. But doing it the way he coaches it is No. 1, and if you do it the way he coaches, most of the time you’re going to win. … If one of us is off, then the whole line is off.”
And overall?
In 2024, Bill Callahan was one of the winners of the Pro Football Writers of America Paul "Dr. Z" Zimmerman Award, which goes to assistant coaches for lifetime achievement.
He’s influenced a roster of players, including Lincoln Kennedy, D’Brickashaw Ferguson, Nick Mangold, Hall of Famer Alan Faneca, Conklin, Joel Bitonio, Brandon Scherff, Trent Williams, Tyron Smith and Zack Martin.
But so far, the returns in Nashville have people wondering if a downtrodden franchise is going to wind up being a hole for him, more blank pages than the next chapter that was anticipated.