Brian Callahan, Mike Vrabel couldn't be more different. For Tennessee Titans, that's the point | Estes

This is going to be very different.

Could be good or bad for the Tennessee Titans. We'll see. I have to believe, though, that it was intentional. If asked to construct an exact opposite of the previous coach, you’d end up with the agreeable gentleman at the podium Thursday afternoon.

I don’t yet know Brian Callahan. But at first glance, he seems the furthest thing from Mike Vrabel the Titans could have found.

That was my takeaway from Callahan’s introductory news conference.

Maybe it was when he quoted Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool’s soccer manager. Maybe it was when he spoke about being demanding of players without “having fire rage from your head.” Maybe it was about his willingness to change what he wants to do as a coach if it’s not what players wanted, and how he’d even find that out: “You have to have those guys feel like they’re in a place where they can say what they need to say.”

If I had to pick one moment, it was when Callahan got choked up while thanking those with the Cincinnati Bengals, his old team. He had to take a beat to compose himself, assuring the room that “I’ll get it together in a second. Don’t worry.”

"There's something special about where I came from that I hope to replicate here,” he said. “I think you can see it in how I feel when I speak about it, but I loved going to work every single day there. That's the environment we're going to create here. I want a place where people love coming to work.”

Callahan was impressive. He demonstrated why Bengals coach Zac Taylor and players reached out to the Titans — unsolicited, I was told — to recommend him. Callahan came across as extremely likable, right down to the heartwarming moment afterward when his young son, Ronan, hugged him on stage.

“How’d I do?” Callahan bent down to ask him.

“Good!”

I agreed with Ronan.

When Callahan explained his coaching style and showed his emotions, it was genuine. He wasn’t deliberately contrasting himself with Vrabel. He was just being himself, which made that distinction even more obvious.

“There was an instant connection with Ran and I,” Callahan said. “We see building a team, we see the culture of the building the same. And that's an important part of this entire process.”

In a little more than 45 minutes, Vrabel didn't come up. Callahan didn’t reference him. Neither did Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk or general manager Ran Carthon in their prepared comments (only the new coach fielded questions from assembled media — that part didn’t change).

But they didn't need to name him. It wasn't difficult to catch the drift.

“Hunting (for players) at the same time isn't the same as hunting together,” Carthon said, “and under Brian Callahan, we will be going out and hunting together. I'm looking forward to it.”

Revisionist history is often unkind after a firing, but Vrabel did good work with the Titans. At times, it was great work. Not that long ago, he was considered one of the NFL’s best coaches. And for the most part, he did it his way.

He’d probably still be coaching the Titans if he’d have been more apt to compromise on that, but would he have been the same coach? I don’t know.

Go deeper: Why was Mike Vrabel fired? How the Titans got to this point | Estes

Accordingly, the budding friendship of Carthon and Callahan was a recurring theme Thursday.

Carthon warmly greeted Callahan’s family at the door of the facility, a scene captured and posted by the Titans’ social media team. Adams Strunk referenced “a very special chemistry” between the two men that left her “even more confident that (Callahan) was our next head coach.”

Asked at one point what he believed the Titans wanted in this hire, Callahan replied: “They want a partnership. I think Ran and I are going to build a great one.”

Six years ago, when Vrabel was introduced as the Titans’ coach, he spoke about working with former GM Jon Robinson. His intent was positive. He said he knew they’d disagree at times, however.

That day, Vrabel also said the following: "Having a relationship with your players doesn't mean being best friends with them. It means caring about them, telling them the truth, being honest.”

In 2022, The Athletic's Dan Pompei wrote an interesting article about Callahan’s history of working with quarterbacks. It quoted Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow as saying of Callahan: “I consider us friends, which is rare to consider yourself as a player to be friends with a coach.”

That’s not good or bad.

It’s just different.

When the Titans chose Brian Callahan, that was the idea.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: For Titans, Brian Callahan couldn't be more different from Mike Vrabel