NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Titans are taking a big road trip early in the preseason, in a move Brian Callahan feels is almost a bit like going away for training camp.
The team won't come home between one practice and a game in Tampa Bay and two sessions and a game in Atlanta.
The Titans looked into going away in bigger fashion, to Napa or Newport Beach, Calif. or The Greenbriar, a luxury resort in West Va.
But it ruled out the California venues because of logistics and because the team is going West three times in the regular season. The team scratched The Greenbriar because it is incredibly expensive and perhaps too nice for a true camp feel.
"I wanted to go away for camp," Brian Callahan said. "We looked at a couple different options. A lot of them just didn't wind up making a ton of sense. ...So we were trying to figure out, how
do we try to make training camp feel a little bit more like training camp? How do you find a way to get your team together?
"Because now a days, practice ends, the days over at like 5:30. and they all go home. So it's more like preseason practice than it is like training camp. So I was trying to find a way to manufacture a little of that training camp feeling with going on the road for two straight weeks."
Callahan said rosad trips are his favorite part of pro football, with dinner and meetings and everyone hanging out watching college football games.
"There is nothing else to do but be together," he said. "That was the intent, how do I find a way in training camp to get our team together, change the scenery up, go against somebody else, deal with a little bit of adversity. You're on the road, it's not comfortable, you're not familiar with your surroundings. How do we respond to that?"
The Titans will leave Nashville Wednesday, Aug. 6 after practice for Tampa Bay and practice against the Buccaneers at their facility on the 7th ahead of their preseason opener on Satyrday the 9th.
They will fly to Atlanta after the game and have the 10th off, with a light day the 11th at the Falcons practice facility before joint practices the 12th and the 13th ahead of the game on the 15th after which they will fly home.
So they will be gone eight nights.
The extended trip will be a logistical challenge for the team's operations, equipment and video departments.
"Oh, it's a nightmare for them," Callahan said. "They may night be as excited as I am about it."
It will be the first between-game stayover for the franchise since 2017. That was during a significant stretch of the regular season, and it did not go well at all.
The team stayed in Arizona following a loss to the Cardinals before heading to San Francisco for a bad loss to the 49ers for Weeks 14 and 15 in December.
The Titans won't be doing a similar thing this season when they have back-to-back games at Arizona and Las Vegas in early October.
After the preseason trip, the Titans will be home for their preseason finale on Aug. 22 against the Minnesota Vikings before opening the regular season at Denver on Sept. 7.