Few teams enter 2026 with a bigger swing possible in either direction than the Tennessee Titans. A rookie quarterback trying to bounce back from a rough debut season, a completely rebuilt coaching staff, and one of the more aggressive free-agency spends in the league make this a real inflection point — here’s our team’s full breakdown of where things stand.
2025 Season Recap
Tennessee’s 2025 season was rough from start to finish. The Titans opened 1-11 — their worst start since 1994, back when the franchise was still the Houston Oilers — and finished 3-14, matching their 2024 mark and landing last in the AFC South for a third straight season. Head coach Brian Callahan was fired on October 13 after a 1-5 start, closing out his tenure at 4-19 overall, and offensive assistant Mike McCoy took over on an interim basis and went 2-9 the rest of the way. Tennessee was swept by every team in the AFC South for the first time in franchise history and lost every divisional game for the first time since 1976, extending its playoff drought to a fourth straight year.
It wasn’t without individual bright spots. Rookie quarterback Cam Ward, the No. 1 overall pick in 2025, took his lumps on a rebuilding roster, but return specialist Chimere Dike set the NFL’s rookie record for all-purpose yards and earned first-team All-Pro honors as a punt returner, and defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons made first-team All-Pro as well. Those flashes, combined with the scale of the collapse, set up a genuinely different-looking roster and staff for 2026.
Offseason Moves
The headline move was at the top: Tennessee hired Robert Saleh as its new head coach, bringing in a leader with prior head-coaching experience (with the Jets from 2021-2024) after his most recent stop as the 49ers’ defensive coordinator. Saleh built out a staff with real pedigree, hiring former Giants head coach Brian Daboll as offensive coordinator and former 49ers assistant head coach Gus Bradley to run the defense — both hires aimed squarely at speeding up Cam Ward’s development and fixing a defense that finished among the league’s worst last season.
Free agency backed up the coaching investment, with reports putting Tennessee’s total offseason outlay north of $270 million across the roster. The headline addition is receiver Wan’Dale Robinson, signed away from the Giants on a four-year, $78 million deal to give Ward a genuine slot weapon, joined by cornerback Alontae Taylor from the Saints and depth signings up and down both lines. The most notable subtraction was tight end Chig Okonkwo, who left for a three-year deal with the Commanders.
The draft doubled down on the same priorities. With the No. 4 overall pick, Tennessee took Ohio State receiver Carnell Tate to pair with Robinson, then traded up from pick 35 into the back of the first round — sending picks 35, 66 and 101 to Buffalo for picks 31, 69 and 165 — to grab Auburn edge rusher Keldric Faulk at No. 31. A separate trade with Chicago moved Tennessee up to No. 60, where the Titans added Texas linebacker Anthony Hill Jr., giving the new defensive staff a noticeably younger core to build around.
2026 Season Outlook
Tennessee actually caught a break on the schedule: by most measures this is one of the easier slates in the league, with 2026 opponents having posted a combined record below .500 in 2025. The season opens with Saleh facing his former team, the Jets, in Week 1, and Daboll gets a return trip to face the Giants in Week 3. The Titans still have work to do to climb back into a loaded AFC South that swept them last season — see our Colts preview for how the rest of the division shapes up this year. In a small but real signal of how little national attention this team is drawing right now, Tennessee has zero primetime games on the 2026 slate, and the bye doesn’t arrive until Week 9.
Our Team’s Projection
We’re projecting Tennessee at 7-10 for 2026 — not a leap into contention, but a real step forward from back-to-back 3-14 finishes. The Titans’ season win total sits at 6.5, and our projection leans toward the over.
The case for the over starts with the schedule: a lighter slate than usual gives a retooled roster real room to bank wins that simply weren’t available the last two years, and the combination of a full offseason with Ward, a reshaped receiver room, and a defense getting an infusion of youth at premium positions should show up in the record even if the week-to-week results stay uneven. The case for the under is just as real — this is still a first-year coaching staff installing new systems on both sides of the ball, Ward is entering only his second season after a difficult rookie year, and the AFC South has more talent than Tennessee’s recent record against it suggests. A slow start similar to last year’s could put 6.5 out of reach no matter how the roster looks on paper.