At 2-12, winless at home, and running out the string with little visible progress, the Tennessee Titans feel less like a team fighting through a bad year and more like one waiting for the inevitable reset.
Interim coach Mike McCoy has not changed the tone any more than Brian Callahan did earlier in the season. The results are the same. So is the sense of drift.
When things reach that stage, conventional solutions lose their pull. A mid-tier coordinator or another schematic swing does not feel like enough. That is how unusual ideas start gaining traction, even ones that would have sounded unrealistic not long ago.
That is how Nick Saban‘s name ends up hovering around this situation. Saban has been away from the sidelines for two years after stepping away from Alabama, closing the book on a run that reshaped college football.
His retirement felt final at the time. But the longer Tennessee’s uncertainty lingers, the more his name fits the question they are really trying to answer, which is not about play-calling or systems. It is about control.
The Titans are nearing the end of a season that never stabilized. There was no stretch where it looked like something solid was being built. No identity to point to.
When teams look like that, the coaching search becomes less about finding the next trend and more about finding someone who can impose order.
Why this idea refuses to go away in Tennessee
The obvious pushback is familiar. Saban‘s two seasons in the NFL with the Miami Dolphins ended at 15-17. That chapter never worked, and it still colors how people view the idea of him returning to the league.
But that situation came with problems that went beyond coaching. Miami did not have a franchise quarterback, and the roster he inherited had just gone 4-12.
Tennessee believes its situation is different, largely because of Cam Ward.
Ward has already made it clear he wants to be involved in what comes next, not in dictating scheme, but in understanding the person who will be leading the team day to day.
“Yeah, I’ve had conversations with them about how I wanna be involved. They know how much I wanna be involved,” Ward said. “Not even with the scheme part of it. As the head coach, who he is every day, on an everyday basis, and then just then we’ll get into the scheme, what I’m good at, what I want to do.”
That distinction matters. Ward is not asking for control. He is asking for clarity. That has always been Saban’s strength, especially with quarterbacks.
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