Every Tennessee Titans head coach in team history

Lou Rymkus

The first coach in Houston Oilers history was Lou Rymkus and he immediately led them to great things. The Oilers won a championship in Year 1 under Rymkus but after the team started out 1-3-1 in the 1961 season, he was fired.

Wally Lemm

The second-ever coach in Oilers history was Wally Lemm, who took over after Rymkus was canned. Lemm helped turn things around for Houston in his first season, leading them to yet another championship, giving them their second in a row.

Lemm ended up leaving for the vacant job in St. Louis and stayed there until the end of the 1965 season. He came back to Houston in 1960 and continued to coach the Oilers for five years before retiring. In six years on the job, he led the team to one championship and made it to the playoffs two other times.

Pop Ivy

Funny enough, when Lemm first decided to leave the Oilers, he and Pop Ivy switched jobs with Ivy coming over from St. Louis to lead the team. In Ivy’s first year leading the team, the Oilers reached the 1962 AFL Championship but fell to the Dallas Texans. Ivy was fired after the Oilers had their first losing season in 1963.

Sammy Baugh

The Oilers hired Sammy Baugh to replace Ivy, giving them their fourth head coach in just five seasons. Baugh did not have much luck leading the way in Houston, winning just four games and not getting a second year with the Oilers.

Pop Ivy

Funny enough, when Lemm first decided to leave the Oilers, he and Pop Ivy switched jobs with Ivy coming over from St. Louis to lead the team. In Ivy’s first year leading the team, the Oilers reached the 1962 AFL Championship but fell to the Dallas Texans. Ivy was fired after the Oilers had their first losing season in 1963.

Sammy Baugh

The Oilers hired Sammy Baugh to replace Ivy, giving them their fourth head coach in just five seasons. Baugh did not have much luck leading the way in Houston, winning just four games and not getting a second year with the Oilers.

Hugh Taylor

After Baugh didn’t pan out, the Oilers hired their fifth head coach in six years and it was Hugh Taylor who was getting a chance to show what he could do. He had the same record as Baugh and was dismissed following another disappointing season for the Oilers.

Ed Hughes

The Oilers hoped they’d end their losing ways and become a relevant franchise again and gave Ed Hughes a five-year contract. Unfortunately, he lasted just one year before resigning and the Oilers went a lackluster 4-9-1.

Bill Peterson

After Hughes resigned just one year into his lengthy contract, the Oilers once again were tasked with finding a new head coach and hired Bill Peterson. This ultimately didn’t pan out, as Peterson coached for a year and a half in Houston and only won one game at the helm before getting dismissed.

Sid Gillman

Sid Gillman was brought to Houston to serve as the general manager but eventually stepped into the head coach role when Peterson’s Oilers continued to flounder. Gillman went 1-8 after taking over and then the next year led the Oilers to a 7-7 record. He stepped aside following the 1974 season so that he could focus more on his general manager duties.

Bum Phillips

Gillman stepped aside and promoted defensive coordinator Bum Phillips to the head coach spot. Phillips made the Oilers relevant again, leading them to five winning seasons and double-digit wins in four seasons and helping them reach two AFC Championship Games. Following the 1980 season, he was fired after an embarrassing loss to the Raiders in the Wild Card game.

Ed Biles

The Oilers needed to find someone who could keep Houston on the track they had been on but unfortunately, Ed Biles was not that guy. The Oilers went 7-9 in Biles’ first year on the job and then won one measly game in the strike-shortened 1982 season. After an 0-6 start in 1983, Biles resigned and the Oilers were once again going to be in the market for a head coach.

Chuck Studley

Following Biles’ resignation, defensive coordinator Chuck Studley was promoted to interim head coach. The Oiilers wenr 2-8 under Studley’s guidance and this was the only NFL head coaching job Studley had.

Hugh Campbell

The Oilers were vying to land Warren Moon in free agency and to help increase their odds, they hired legendary CFL head coach Hugh Campbell, who won six Grey Cups with the Edmonton Eskimoes, where Moon had previously played through the 1983 season.

While Moon did ultimately sign with the Oilers, Campbell’s tenure with the team did not go well. Campbell’s Oilers won just eight games in under two seasons and was canned before the end of his second season came to a close.

Jerry Glanville

After Campbell was dismissed with two games to go in the 1985 season, defensive coordinator Jerry Glanville was promoted to the head coach spot. While the Oilers went 0-2 in Glanville’s interim run, he turned them into a hard-hitting squad that teams feared by his second full year on the job.

The Oilers reached the AFC Divisional round in 1987 and 1988 and also reached the playoffs in the 1989 season. Glanville was fired following the 1989 season but quickly found work as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, a job he held from 1990 to 1993.

Jack Pardee

Jack Pardee was no strange to being a head coach in the NFL, having coached the Chicago Bears and Washington Redskins before taking 10 years to lead the charge for the Houston Oilers. Pardee was hired to take over in the 1990 season and hadn’t been a head coach in the NFL since 1980. He showed he still had it though, leading the Oilers to a 9-7 record in his first year.

Things continued to improve under Pardee, as the Oilers won their division in the 1991 season, their first time doing so since 1967 when they were still in the AFL. Unfortunately, while Pardee led the Oilers to the postseason in all but one season, the team was never able to do much damage whenever they got there. Warren Moon was traded following another early exit in the 1993 and the team went 1-9 in 1994 before Pardee was shown his walking papers.

Jeff Fisher

After Pardee was relieved of his duties, the Oilers promoted defensive coordinator Jeff Fisher to the head coach position, a job that he ended up holding onto for 17 years. The Oilers spent their first-round pick on Steve McNair in the 1995 draft and the rest is history.

In Fisher’s fourth year on the job, the Oilers relocated to Tennessee where they were still known as the Oilers for the first two years. It wasn’t until 1999 when the Oilers were no more and instead became known as the Tennessee Titans.

The name change proved to be a good thing for the Titans, as they went 13-3 under Fisher and won the AFC, reaching the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history. While the Titans lost that game to the Rams, Fisher proved to be the right man for the job. The Titans went 13-3 again the next year and had four more seasons with double-digit wins.

Fisher and the Titans agreed to part ways following the 2010 season after some drama emerged between him and then-quarterback Vince Young.

Mike Munchak

Mike Munchak goes way back with the Titans/Oilers organization. The team spent its first-round pick on him in the 1982 draft and spent the entirety of his 12-year career with the Oilers. After retiring, he remained with the organization, serving as an offensive assistant coach and continued to serve in different roles until he was hired as the head coach in 2011, which was his 30th season with the franchise.

The Titans went 9-7 during Munchak’s first year on the job but they went 6-10 in Year 2. It was vital that Munchak’s squad show improvement during his third year but unfortunately, Tennessee went 7-9 and Munchak was relieved of his duties following the 2013 season. He moved back into his offensive line coach role with the Steelers and Broncos following his dismissal from Tennessee, marking the first time in his playing and coaching career that he wasn’t affiliated with the Titans or Oilers.

Ken Whisenhunt

The Titans weren’t the first head coaching job that Ken Whisenhunt had, as he had been the head coach of the Arizona Cardinals from 2007 to 2012. During his time in Arizona, Whisenhunt helped lead the Cardinals to a Super Bowl appearance in just his second year on the job.

Whisenhunt was canned from that job at the end of the 2012 season and spent a year as the offensive coordinator with the Chargers where he helped rejuvenate what had been a miserable offense the season prior. The Titans snatched him up to be their head coach and it did not go well.

The Titans went just 2-14 in the 2014 season and had the second overall pick for Whisenhunt’s second draft with the team. After the Titans went just 1-6 in Whisenhunt’s first seven games in 2015, he was fired, winning just three games in under two years on the job.

Mike Mularkey

Following Whisenhunt’s dismissal, assistant head coach Mike Mularkey was named interim head coach. The team went 2-7 under Mularkey but he was kept on as the head coach for the 2016 season, much to the fanbase’s dismay.

To his credit, Mularkey did turn the Titans around in 2016, leading them to a 9-7 record. In his second full year on the job, the Titans went 9-7 again and went on to beat the Chiefs in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. At the end of the day, none of that mattered, and Mularkey and the Titans agreed to split following Tennessee’s loss to the Patriots in the divisional round.

Mike Vrabel

The Titans swiped Mike Vrabel from the Houston Texans to be the 19th head coach in franchise history. Vrabel was the Texans defensive coordinator in 2017 and turned out to be a solid hire for Tennessee, leading the Titans to a two straight winning seasons in 2018 and 2019.

Not only did the Titans land back-to-back winning records in Vrabel’s first two years but they made it all the way to the AFC Championship Game in the 2019 season. Vrabel put things into overdrive from there, leading the Titans to double-digit win seasons in 2020 and 2021 and helped lead the Titans to a number one playoff seeding during the 2021 season and was crowned Coach of the Year.

Unfortunately, the team suffered back-to-back losing seasons in 2022 and 2023, and Vrabel was shockingly fired.

Brian Callahan

After the Vrabel era ended, the Titans were searching for a new head coach for the first time since 2018. They landed on Brian Callahan, who had been the offensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals for five years.

We don’t know what Callahan is capable of yet as the Titans head coach but let’s hope this hire was the right one and that the organization doesn’t need to search for a new one for quite some time.