 Good afternoon everybody. Welcome. You know, we're here to celebrate the man of the hour, Brian Callahan. Before we get started, I want to say some thank yous to the people who are part of this search committee and to help drive the interview process. I want to start with Chad Brinker, Anthony Robinson, Burke, Bryce Wasserman, Ms. Amy, Kenneth Burke. I meant Barkley, sorry. Our entire business staff, as well as Sarah Bailey, Todd Torselli, and one name that's not a part of this organization that I feel the need to thank is Zack Taylor, head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals. Zack was his ability to communicate with us, you know, about Brian is I feel is unmatched and I would be remissed if I didn't say thank you to him. So thank you, Zack, for all the all the help you provided. Going into the process a little bit as well documented. As you guys know, we interviewed nine candidates over the course of two weeks or so. It was a long process. I feel like we met with a lot of candidates mostly via zoom. We had one in in person as well as the second round interviews that were in person. Want to thank those gentlemen for the time that they gave us. Some guys were still in the playoff hunt. And so it was a little bit of a situation to kind of work around schedules and when teams made guys available to us. But we made it work. I thought our process was very thorough. It allowed us to see the best of each candidate, which ultimately led us to who we're here to celebrate now in Brian Callahan. I'm going to stop calling him Brian Callahan because we call him Callie. So the one thing that stood out to us with Callie was just his ability to not only know what he wants, but be able to articulate that in a clear and concise manner. And what that would allow us to do it allow our players to understand what their roles are and go out and execute and play fast, which is what we're going to do. But the only other side of that as a scout as a personnel guy, it gives us the ability to know what we're going out to hunt for. And one thing that we keep talking about here is our group is hunting at the same time isn't the same as hunting together. And under Brian Callahan, we will be going out and hunting together. And so I'm looking forward to it. I'm excited and I'm actually ready to get off this podium and get ready to get started. So with that said, we'll bring up our controller and owner, Miss Amy Adam Strump. Well, hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. And wow, it's been an exciting week. I am thrilled to be here to introduce our new head coach, Brian Callahan. And going into this interview process, we knew Brian was a really special candidate. We knew his background and his extensive experience. We saw the list of quarterbacks he's worked with and elite offenses he's been a part of. We knew about his deep knowledge and understanding of the game. And on a personal note, I knew that we both shared the connection of having fathers who passed down their love of football to their children. And after all that research and the reviews of people whose lives and careers he has impacted so deeply, then we got to meet Brian. He exceeded all of our expectations. It was clear how the meeting quickly shifted from your standard interview to a player breakdown session that he and ran had a very special chemistry between them. Honestly, watching that interaction unfold made us even more confident that he was our next head coach. As our second interview went on, we realized that we didn't want him leaving the building without agreeing to be our next head coach. I've heard various things about me grabbing him and grabbing his legs. But anyway, it was a mutual thing here. When it came time to ask him, we were so happy to learn that he wanted to be a Titan as much as he wanted him to be. We are thrilled that we get to enter this next era of Titans football with him at the helm. As I've said time and time again, I will never shy away from saying that I have extremely high expectations for our football team and really our entire organization. I expect us to build a team that is going to have sustained success and bring Lombardi trophies to the city of Nashville. I am confident that we have put the right pieces in place to bring that goal to life and build a future that Titan fans will be proud of. With that, I'd like to introduce the head coach of the Tennessee Titans, Brian Callaghan. This is a pretty surreal moment for me. I need to fix this for you. Is that good? You know, you don't get to these places in front of rooms like this with incredible people sitting here watching this. I thought a lot of help along the way. I didn't want to make sure that I'd point out the people that have done that. Most importantly, you're gonna have to bear with me because it might be a little more difficult than I thought it was before I got up here. This really is a lifelong dream of mine to be standing at this podium in front of everybody here. To be a head coach at the highest level, to be this franchise's head coach, is a great responsibility and an incredible honor. I'm excited to put in the work and hard work necessary for us to be able to have the success that we all envision. There's great things about Nashville and there's great things about the Tennessee Titans and part of my job is to make sure that we bring all those things to life. I'd like to thank first and foremost Amy, Kenneth, and Barclay for giving me this opportunity to run this historic franchise in partnership with you. Again, it's an incredible responsibility that I do not take lightly and it's one that I'm deeply appreciative for. From the moment of our first Zoom meeting, I felt an unbelievable connection to the people in the room. And that was, as Rand mentioned, Anthony Robertson, Chad Brinker, Rand Carton was in there, Burke was in there, Bryce was in there. Just the connection from the get-go was incredible and I knew that it was gonna be a place that I wanted to call home. It felt like that from the very beginning. I'm thankful that they felt the same way. I was about to make an impassioned plea to Rand as our meeting was concluding on Monday evening and it turns out I didn't have to do that. They wanted me about us exactly the same way that I wanted them and that everything felt right. The relationships felt right, the energy felt right. When I was walking around the building and we had opportunities to meet people from different parts of the organization, it was an incredible feeling. It felt like a family. I've been fortunate to be a part of an incredible organization in Cincinnati that felt very similar and it was comfortable to me to feel that. There's unbelievable people here. I haven't met all of them and I can't wait to meet everybody that works in this organization. But man, if you guys could feel the way I felt after that first Zoom meeting, I was about to call Rand and be like, all right, man, let's get it done. I don't care with anybody. You can talk to whoever you want to, but I want it done now. Um, and that's how I felt. It was very important to me that this is the place that I wanted to be. And again, I'm very thankful that they felt the same way. Um, I do want to point out, um, really most importantly, though, that there was an instant connection with Ran and I and we see building a team. We see the culture of the building the same, and that's an important part of this entire process. His energy and passion for the Tennessee Titans. Made me believe in him, uh, and that's what made me want to be here standing in this room. And I'm again thankful that I get to be here because a lot of that is because of what ran presented as we started this process. He's an excellent communicator and he's an outstanding person. He's earned my respect immediately and ran. I can't wait to get going. Um, I do want everyone to know that this has felt like a family to me from the start. And that's one of the most important things to me is my family. And so when you talk about that, there's a quote from Jurgen Klopp. I didn't want to just rip it off and present it as my own. But he he had said it at one point. He's a soccer coach at Liverpool. He said, when you agree on a common idea and work towards it together, you can create something very special. And that's what I believe in. That's what we'll do here. Um, that to me is what this is all about. And there is no ability to have success without those principles. I would like to thank the Cincinnati Bangles Organization. Mike Brown, who is one of probably one of the greatest man that I've ever met. I'll get it together in a second. No worry. Katie and Troy Blackburn, their daughters, Elizabeth Caroline and Duke Tobin and his staff. They gave me an incredible opportunity to grow and they're patient and they invested in me and I'll forever be grateful for that. The next one, you can see you can see how much these people mean to me. I'll get it together. Alright, and then probably most importantly, Zach Taylor. He's a great friend. He's been an incredible mentor. He's a fantastic football coach. Thank you for everything. Alright, thank you to the players and the coaching staff. Obviously without an incredible amount of hard work, I don't get to stand here. And there's a lot of people that go into that staff players. Particularly the quarterback room, Joe Burrow, Jake Browning. Those guys are I'm incredibly indebted to. I wish I could list the whole team. But I can't will be here too long. You guys get bored. But I loved working with those players every day. There's there's there's something special about where I came from that I hope to replicate here. I think you can see it and how I feel when I speak about it. But I love going to work every single day there. And that's the environment we're going to create here. I want a place where people love coming to work. They enjoy everybody they're around. And that creates an environment that's sustainable and you can have sustained excellence and have a chance to win a lot of football games. And so that's what we're after. I would like to think probably most importantly than anybody else in this room, my wife, Allison, who's standing right here sitting right here. She's everything I could ever ask for in a partner. This is a this is a difficult profession. And I wouldn't be here today and I couldn't do my job if it wasn't for her. To my two wonderful children. Thank you for being good today. Nora, right here and Ronan right there. You say hi, bud. Yep. Alright, and there's a lot of people that I don't get to say here that have that have invested in my career and invested in me that are hugely important into me getting to this this this point in my career. But I apologize. I can't list everybody again. But thank you to everybody who's ever invested in me who spent time with me who's helped me grow. I'm very appreciative for all that time and effort. I'd like to thank my parents, Bill and Val. They are not here today. They're watching somewhere on the stream. They've been the most influential people in my life. They've been my biggest supporters, and they've given me an incredible amount of confidence that show me the type of love and nurturing that allowed me to be the person I am today. And there's nobody that that I I'd lean on more at any point in my life than both of them. They've been the single most greatest influence I've ever had. And thank you for the love and support. Just a couple people in my family I'd like to point out. Um, my brother Danny, his wife, Susie, my sister Catherine, her husband, Chris, their kids Liam and Evelyn, my youngest sister Jackie, and my family means everything to me. I love you guys. Thank you for everything. My in laws, Connie and Jack, my brother in law, Jack, his wife, Sherry, along with their three kids, Jack, Navy and Wells. That's a lot of jacks in there for those of you who are counting. Thank you for all the love and support as well. All right, there's two people here that I'd like to recognize. But first, my my high school coach is at De La Salle High School in Concord, California. It's a place that I'm incredibly proud to have gone incredibly part to be a part of. And specifically Bob Lattister and Terry Edson, who are not here today, but hopefully they're watching this. Thank you for showing me what commitment to hard work was and what it meant to be a part of a team. I'd like to have special recognition for Mark Panella, his wife, Sue, his daughters, Francesca and Sophia, who are sitting somewhere. They're here somewhere. Mark and Sue are right here in the front. Mark was my quarterback's coach in high school. He is a Franklin resident here today, and he helped raise me into the man that I am standing right in front of you. The last one I'd like to point out is Patrick Walsh. Patrick Walsh is currently the head coach at Sarah High School in San Mateo, California. He gave me my first coaching and teaching job in 2008. And so I felt like it was important that he be here for this. He came all the way from California, took the red eye last night to be here. So thank you. He's one of my closest friends and incredible mentors. And again, I would not be how you'd be sitting here in front of you without his love, support and guidance. And he's always been there for me. Thanks, P Dub. Yep. All right. Moving on to pass the emotional stuff here. Glad that's over. What we're trying to do here is establish a culture of high standards and clear communication, both on and off the field. Meetings, walkthroughs, practices, how we interact in the building, how we work in the front office, how our scouts work, how our players work, how everybody in this building works. Everyone's going to be held to a high standard. We want to be held to a high standard. I've never met a player in football that doesn't want to be held to the highest possible standard, so we can go make that happen and get it done. There's going to be excitement to walk into this building every day. You guys saw how emotional I got talking about Cincinnati. Well, that's how I want our players and people to feel here. When you walk into building every day, there's an incredible excitement about what's ahead. Anybody who deals with our players, the expectation is to bring great energy, have great experience and have great expertise. We want everyone who affects them to be able to have that enthusiasm and our shared vision. We're going to be a connected football team. We're going to be a connected organization. I believe in it. If you don't have a connection, it's really hard to do anything worthwhile. The business of the sport really is all about people and relationships, and so if we don't have any sort of connection, there's really no point in us doing our jobs the way we do it. This is what makes it fun. This is what I enjoy the most is being able to be connected with the people that I work with every single day. All right. Everyone wants to be something, wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves. That's what makes this sport special. That's what makes sports in general special. But if you're a part of something bigger than yourself, you sacrifice for the greater good. You give up some of your individual successes and aspirations so we can lift the team. And there's been that trait goes from high school through pro football. Every team I've been on that's been great has had those traits. And it's a critical part of building a great football team. Being a great teammate, playing hard for each other, helping everyone around them accomplish a greater goal is the principles of what this program will be built on. Those are the things that we ready to accomplish as a football team, as an organization. I cannot wait to get started. These are the things that I enjoy this part, but the work is really what I enjoy the most. And so I can't wait to get going. I can't wait to see our players for all those guys out there watching. I can't wait to meet you. Please come see me. My door is open. I can't wait to start building our relationship so we can go go win a bunch of football games and have a lot of success. The last thing I'll say is that really to the Titans fans, the city of Nashville and the great state of Tennessee, we're going to need your incredible support. You're a huge part of this. We need Nissan Stadium to be the most feared stadium that people walk into every Sunday. We need every every every possible bit of energy. Every every last amount of enthusiasm. Our players need to feel the energy. I can't wait to see you guys there. It's going to be a lot of work ahead, but a lot of fun as well. I'm proud. I'm humbled to be standing here before you as a head coach of Tennessee Titans. Thank you. Yeah, what are you feeling about Will Lavis and have you connected with him? I have I called will last I don't even know what day it is anymore, but I called will a few days ago after I got the job, and then I saw him here today. He was working out, so I got chance to catch up with him. I told him he's leaving town. I think tomorrow morning, but he'll be back. But I've I've really enjoyed getting to know him. I can't wait to get to work with him. He's got a lot of really. Special physical talents that I'm that I'm excited to go to go see we can make better and everything about him so far has been fantastic and I'm excited to get to go further down into it. Quarterbacks you work with is pretty extensive. What are some of the things you learn from guys like Peyton Manning, Stafford, et cetera, that you want to bring to help Levitt's devils way? Yeah, I've been incredibly fortunate to be around great players. Um and those guys all bring something different and unique when you talk about Peyton Manning and his his incredible ability to prepare the intention to detail that he brought every single day. The intensity that he went about his job. Um he shows he those years I was with him showed me what it was like to be what a great quarterback should look like. Not everybody's going to be him and nor is anybody expected to be but the foundation of how he went about his business was was pretty incredible and I've taken that everywhere I've gone. As far as the work ethic involved the attention to detail involved those things are really important. You know, obviously Matthew is a great player in his own right and I learned that Matthew was very different from Peyton, but they were also great players and you let go you let those players be themselves. Um and I didn't try to make Matthew do anything that he didn't want to do. He's not Peyton Manning. Other personalities are different, but they're both great players. Um and what I learned Matthew was an incredibly tough player. Um I've never seen a locker room rally around a player like him the way that they did when I was with him in Detroit. Um he's one of the toughest competitors I've I've ever been around. Um and so you see these traits everywhere you go and you start to realize what it takes for quarterbacks to be successful and I feel like I've got a lot of guys that've been around Joe Burrow. Obviously, um been around a different version of Joe. I got Joe as a young player. A lot of these guys were veteran players when I was around them and Joe's a remarkable, remarkable player. Um he's got a great feel for the game and so to have an environment as a young player where he was growing and having conversations about what he liked and didn't like really helped me learn how to be flexible with the approach for those players and put them in position to do well. Um as far as how they go about their daily routine, what they like conceptually and schematically on those conversations in that in the quarterback room are are able to help foster hopefully a lot of success. And so Brian and I'm sure everything will depend on yeah, I think the biggest the biggest thing that we want to do to start is put the players we have in great position. Um let them be able to find their roles, define what those roles are for them and put them in the matchups that we feel are important to our advantage. That's a very broad general offensive philosophy, but that's sort of the starting point. We want to be great detail in the passing game, route definition, route spacing. Want to be able to complete balls at a high percentage. That's that's always going to be the goal. The run game we still want to be physical. Don't don't get that. Don't get that part twisted that's part of the Titans identity for a long time and it will continue to be will be a physical football team and we'll be able to to run the ball the way we need to to win football games. But that's probably the best way I could say it without going too far in the weeds. I don't know as a guy who has been able to take quarterbacks and maximize what they do with, like you mentioned before, even to the point of adjusting from Joe Lerho to Jake Brown in the middle of the year. What's kind of been the key that to that that you found in terms of maximizing what a guy can do communication, you know, being able to hear what quarterbacks are comfortable with what they like. The offense is always going to have enough place. There's always going to be enough scheme and so you want to know what the quarterbacks feel great about and Jake was incredible with his ability to communicate what he liked. We put it in will put those things in for him so he could have success and that's part of what fosters a great quarterback room is the communication between myself, the coordinated quarterbacks coach and the quarterbacks in the room is knowing what they what they like and what they do well and we try to do as much of that as possible. So if a quarterback says I don't like something we're not going to use it, we're not going to call it and that to me is the most critical part. If you have great feedback and great rapport and a great relationship with those guys they'll do a great job of giving you the information you need to help them and put them in position to be successful and Jake was fantastic at it and obviously led to quite a bit of success. What is your philosophy on defense? What is your philosophy on defense? What is your defense philosophy? Yeah, there's a lot of things you can talk defensively. We're working through, you know, what that's going to look like for us by the types of people we're going to bring in, but at the end of the day, you got to have a very flexible and adaptable defense. You still have to be physical. You still have to run and hit. You have to tackle well. You have to force errors. There's a lot of things you can do that are that in the covered structure game in the pressure package game where it makes it really hard on an offense. And so I know it gives me problems. I know the hard defense is the game plan against. And those are the things that I'm looking for in the style of defense we're going to play without getting too far down a bunch of characteristics. Don't mean much until we put the pads on, but that's what I look for. What makes it hard for me as an offensive coach, that's the style of defense that I'm looking for. Are you at 3-4? No, they're multiple nowadays. Yeah, five-man fronts are part of football, whether you're at 3-4, whether you're in under front. There's going to be those types of players. Everything about the way the structure of the defense is built here is going to be pretty similar as a starting point. But I hesitate to put labels on what and how we're going to do it at this point. How much is the idea of player feedback kind of informed your growth and development as a coach? It's a critical part of it. I think players, you know, they're the ones out there doing it and you want to put them in great position and so you want to know what they like, what they think. A lot of times players have great ideas. They come to the sideline in the game and have a suggestion and usually when they feel really confident about it, it tends to work and that's part of the communication that's involved from player to player, from coach to player. You have to have those guys feel like they're in a place where they can say what they think. And they don't listen to everything. It's not always exactly, not everything they suggest works every time, but you want an environment where they feel like they can do that. And feel like they can have input into what's going on because they're the ones that have to go out and do it. And so if a player says, I don't understand this, how come we don't do it this way? Well, it's my job to explain why. And then if he just still doesn't understand it, I ask him, well, what do you think about it? You can have a good dialogue and a lot of times you're able to find a great solution to whatever the problem is or how would you want others to describe your teaching style, your coaching style? My coaching style is consistent. My demeanor is pretty consistent. I pride myself on being a great teacher. That's first and foremost as a coach. That's all you really care about is how well can you teach and articulate to the players what they need to do. I have plenty of intensity. I'm a pretty laid back demeanor most of the time as you guys will see, but when it's time to make corrections and bring the energy that's necessary, I can do that. But my coaching style is a teaching coaching style. We're trying to make sure that our guys know exactly what to do, how to do it, and can go execute at a really high level and as fast as humanly possible. Protection's been a huge issue here the last few years. How confident are you and your ability to help identify players who can fix that? And how much schematically can you fix that? There's a lot of things that go into protection. Some of it starts with as simple as, you got to go win. You got to win versus tight coverage. Protection is an everybody problem. The quarterback's got to get rid of the ball on time. They have to work through progressions quickly. So to say that it's specifically the offensive line needs to fix the protection problem, I don't agree with that. I think it's a holistic offensive issue if you have protection problems and there's a lot of ways you can help weaknesses, highlight strengths, and everybody's involved in the process. As far as profiles of offensive linemen and players, obviously you're looking for the guys that are great at pass pro. You're looking for guys that can anchor, guys that got great length. We'll talk about all the traits at a later date, but schematically you can help a ton. You can chip, you can bang edges. Back's got to be fantastic in pass protection. They've got to know who to block and how to block them. So it's a holistic offensive issue. And so our job is to find a way to make sure everyone knows all the specifics of what we're trying to get done and then they can technically go execute it. What are some of those specific traits? Excuse me. Will you be the offensive play caller? Yes, I will. Yes, I will. How big of a transition do you expect that to be? Not a big one at all. The way we've worked in Cincinnati, very collaborative. I've been with Zach for five years working with him as the primary play caller and me as the offensive coordinator. I feel really great about the process. Part of that is bringing in great people to help me. A huge part of our next couple of weeks is finding those people because when you have an offensive staff at your trust and guys do a great job with their areas of expertise, our third down, our red zone, by the time you get to Sunday, the game plan is mainly set. Now where guys are on their stripes is when you have to adjust and adapt mid-flow of the game and that's where you have to have great people involved in the game plan but I don't see it as a big adjustment. It's going to be a collaborative approach and we're going to make sure we get the best plays and put our players in the best position so I'm excited about that part and I'm excited to get a good staff put together. Q. Ryan, do you love taking back down that emotional road after you accepted the job? What was your first conversation like with your dad? It was cool. It was cool. I think I asked him I don't know how many fathers and sons have been head coaches in the NFL. I don't think it's a prideful thing for him to be associated with him and I and I just you know it's been a lot you live this lifestyle and there's a lot of ups and downs and there's a lot of adversity that comes your way in coaching and so just the fact that I've been able to stand up here and he's been able to do the same thing for me that's a huge honor you know obviously you want to be like your dad you know It's an important thing Brian OK I'm ready to be a head coach now That's a good question The greatest thing about Zach for me and my experience in Cincinnati was he was an open book and so I was involved in a lot of the things that came across his desk a lot of conversations very involved in the scouting process in Cincinnati as a lot of you know and so just seeing all of those processes work over five years seeing the pitfalls and problems where the landmines can be his allowing me that access to those conversations has been huge and I walk into this role today and I'm sure there'll be plenty of surprises but I feel very confident that I'm prepared for it and it's because of his his allowance and access to what occurred on a daily basis and he would often come by and say hey this you should think about this for a second and write this down I feel incredible investment in me to help me grow and again I feel because of all those experiences I'm kind of uniquely positioned for my first time doing this I feel really good about it in having learned those things Brian having learned those things what was it about this specific job that was attracted to you it felt just like the place that I was at and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible because I loved the atmosphere here you felt the intensity you felt the want to be great and I walked in here on Monday for my interview and that's one of the things that stood out is there's a lot of passionate people here that want the Titans to be a great football team and a great organization and I felt like that's where I want to be I want to be a part of that I want to be with people like that and that's the highest compliment I can pay is that I walked in immediately and it didn't even have to do anything about it it was the people and the people in place here that made me feel like this was the perfect fit for me What were the most important things that they wanted out of this? I guess that might be a question for for them I think they want to you know I think Rand said it before and I believe it really to my core because they want a partnership and then Rand and I are going to build a great one that I don't have any doubt about and so that to me is the starting point is the personalities to mesh and fit and build a partnership with a vision towards building a football team that's got the ability to have sustained success and I can't answer more of that maybe they can chime in but that to me was the biggest part is that we were forming a partnership and a relationship that we're going to work really hard together I love Rand's line you say it one more time Rand about hunting the same as hunting together hunting at the same time isn't the same as hunting together and yeah we're going to hunt together you touched on your staff there what would that process be like do you have some people in mind where you consider people that have been on the staff yeah we're going to take our time we'll be patient we have people in mind there's people we're going to talk to we're not in a rush we can take we can talk to as many people as we like as those things come more new and clear focus as I actually get to go sit in my office and work you guys will hear more about it but the process won't be rushed we're going to get the right people we're going to find great teachers we're going to find people of high character find great communicators and guys that coach with great energy and passion and so that's what we're looking for and we hope to find them and we're going to leave no stone unturned to find those guys I saw you had mentioned you're either coaching or you're allowing it to happen how do you go about holding each coach and player to a high standard and just figuring out where that counts you have to define them you have to define what the standard is a lot of that has to do with execution the way I like to say it is be where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there and so as you show guys what the standard is what the expectation is the easiest way to do it is if they don't meet it is to show what that looks like this isn't what we're looking for this isn't what we want you can be very clear and very demanding without having to go jump it through hoops and having the fire rager from your head but it's pretty simple here's what the standard is here's the expectation and then when it's not being met make sure that we're coaching and teaching where we've fallen short and that's to me the easiest way to describe how you keep people accountable and you hold people to a high standard what's that you look at week six last year you know right before the bi-week you call the guys out and they come back you know you re-emphasize your message you guys went out and dropped what 31 against the 49ers how do you know when it's right to okay I need to get on this guy let him know but then when you gotta pull back it's just a feel it's again the biggest part of it is making sure you've built strong relationships with the players and so you know that they receive those criticisms and coaching points and whatever messaging you deliver my messaging is usually pretty similar to how I'm speaking right now but there's a time and a place where that messaging might need to be a little firmer it might need to be colorful and you just you know based on where your team is at when that might be necessary and again I've known a lot of those guys it's just an ad for a lot of their careers some of those guys I've been with for five years some for four so I feel really confident in where I felt they were in that moment and their ability to receive the message and sometimes there's a place for that and I felt like that was the right time and it certainly felt like it was we just had played a really sloppy game the week before and didn't execute again same thing the standards weren't being met and so the idea is to make sure we hold that everybody to the same standard and a high one and so I felt like it was a time and place for that some of the lessons growing up around a coach and like you said ten years old sitting in your dad's office form you and teach you not just to be a teacher but a leader and what it takes to be a head coach yeah you learn probably more by osmosis just watching people and then you reflect back and you realize that maybe you were learning something along the way I'm not gonna sit in here and tell you that I was learning a lot about leadership at 14 years old I was sitting in John Grunin's quarterback meetings and I was just more in awe of the players there and listening to John talk and but I reflect back on those moments a lot and there's things that you learn about how people handle it how they speak that you hopefully take bits and pieces of and it's just been a lifelong journey of doing that and so I can't point to anything specific necessarily but it certainly helped me be around this game for a long time I feel like I don't really know any other way or any way of life other than football so yeah that's the best way to put it have you thought about what it would be like to interview your dad for a job? no I have not it's a I don't know how many sons have interviewed their fathers for jobs but now I haven't given much thought to that are you on your list Brian? on a list of opportunities for a possible spot? he's under contract I don't there's nothing I can say to that either way so analytics to inform scouting decisions game-playing decisions and in-game decisions yeah analytics you know I think it's a term that's a broad stroke term but there's a lot of details that go into it a lot of different ways it fits at the end of the day you're using you're using hard concrete data to help inform decision making and that's great the more smart people the more information that you're giving the better decisions you can make and so that's always going to be a part moving forward I believe in that information I believe in that data and again the game management part the statistical analysis all those things play a huge role in how we're going to build our organization and they're important and it matters so I believe in it aside from seeing eye to eye with people here the decision makers and what not how much was having a young potential franchise quarterback in place an attraction to this job yeah that part is attractive I thought that Will was a really good player coming out of college and I thought when you watch him play this year you saw really growth I mean you saw him learn the NFL is hard it's hard on quarterbacks it's particularly hard on young ones and so I saw a lot of really positive things some of the throws some of his competitive instincts that he put on tape were really impressive and so I'm excited to get to dive more into that and how can he get better from year one to year two and keep putting in position to have success and so we can score some points on offense Brian you obviously worked with a lot of great wide receivers in Cincinnati what are the qualities that you value most at that position selfless that's a big part you got to have selfless guys they're a huge part of the run game they run routes to get other guys open they work in tandem together and so that's an important part that's a characteristic as far as physical traits go you want guys that are big strong fast and can catch that's a pretty easy way to go about it the more those guys you have the better you're going to be but yeah we have I tell you what's great this is a huge compliment to those receivers in Cincinnati incredibly selfless love playing together know when they're tied that the ball could go anywhere and so they never complained not once about who was getting catches or who was getting targets they knew that at some point it would come for them and so they just did their jobs every day they practiced really hard I thought that was the one thing that was really impressive about that group of players is their practice intensity they really get after it and that's why we were good is because of the way that they practice so I don't know if I've kind of went on a tangent there I apologize but I hope that answers your question specifically working with Joe Borough a younger quarterback I wonder if some of those things might translate to Will as opposed to some of the veteran quarterbacks that you work on yeah it was a great process to go through I think and again even with Jake making his first couple starts in the NFL even though he'd been in the league a few years those processes you learn a lot from you learn how to put the game plan together that suits them you learn how they learn and you learn what they like to do and how do you highlight those things and then while you highlight those things how do you work on the weaknesses with it so I've learned a lot from being a part of Joe's development from day one to now obviously he's a great player and a lot of that development he played a large part in as well so those guys are impressive people to be around and you but you take the lessons of how you coach that and you look back and go was that good or bad and I think a lot of it was good there's some things that I would do differently that I'm looking forward to doing more as I get going with Will some of the lessons that you took away from the leaner years early in Cincinnati about what it takes to turn things around and get things back on a good trajectory yeah that's a fantastic question a lot of adversity in those early years you know we weren't we didn't quite have the roster to compete with some of the teams we were playing against but we saw in those in those dark days the core of what our team was going to be there's a lot of players there in that first and second season that are still there now and we're there for for sort of the the glory of it but I learned that that adversity strikes consistency Zach was an incredibly consistent leader we just kept hammering the message and we believed in what was happening even though the wins weren't taking place there wasn't the tangible evidence that this is what's happening but we felt it we saw it in the locker room we knew at some point as we kept building our roster that we were going to be a really good football team and our players believed it our coaches believed it and that those are those are good lessons to to beat through some of those lean years I mean oh and 11 was not a fun place to be but we learned a lot from it and really the foundation of what our team became two years later was a lot of guys that had went through that process and so you learn a lot about people when things are tough we learned a lot about other guys in that football team and there was a lot of them that were incredibly high character love playing football and they they helped us get out of those those times as well so you learn the most when things aren't going very well everyone can be positive when when you're winning a bunch of football games so yeah those are probably incredible intense learning experiences for me when this team was put together and the draft and free agency obviously there'll be turn over each year what's a constant what's it consistent you want your teams to be known for year in year out resilient and relentless you know I think that's the easiest way to say it you want you want your team to have those two qualities and if you have those things if you're if you're resilient and you can handle the ups and downs and you can handle the good and the bad and you're relentless and how you approach every day at work every day at practice every game you play your results will they'll come and if you if you turn on the tape and you look at the Tennessee Titans and I hope those are the two words that come to mind what's the approach on to a balance on the offense as far as like how does that dictate your ability to adapt and make those adjustments you have to one more time at the beginning your approach to balance on the offense it's so different from coordinator to coordinator or play crawler for you what is your approach to that and how much does that impact your ability to adapt and make the adjustments that you have to do in game yeah it really depends on the game you know and I think there's games where you may end up running the ball for a bunch of yards and you're lopsided to run there's games where it's hard to run the football and you may push into the passing game really at the end of the day you try to be as balanced as you can be but it's really whatever it takes to win that Sunday and that's the best way I can say it I don't worry too much about balance in that regard because we're trying to win and whatever it takes that Sunday to win we're going to do you want to be balanced it's ideal you want to have a great marriage you want to have a great play action game to marry with your screen game and you want to be able to throw the ball in the moments that everyone knows you have to throw it third downs red zone two minutes to go in the game you have to be able to execute in all those situations to win a football game and so the balanced part is important to some degree but ultimately it's going to be whatever it takes to win how do you plan on balancing the new open head coach play calling all the time and energy that goes into that and overseeing both sides how does that influence how do you build the staff around you to me it's all about hiring the right people and people that you trust people that can do their jobs at a very high level that's a mix of veteran coaches having guys that have been around having good energy and younger coaches guys that bring new ideas out of the box thinking those things are all important when you build the staff as far as my role I'm going to take some of that energy as far as my role I'm going to take it every day as it comes and I'm going to learn a lot as we go but I feel really confident in my ability to handle all the different parts that are asked of me on a day to day basis as a play caller as a head coach as an offensive head coach with overseeing a defense and so I'm incredibly confident in my ability to do that so that's probably the best way I could say it thanks we'll get some photos here thanks guys