It was five years ago, but less than a mile away. Brian Callahan was at his second combine as Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator. Cincinnati had the first pick. LSU Heisman winner Joe Burrow had just left the team’s suite at Lucas Oil Stadium, and out with him went owner Mike Brown, after Brown’s only combine interview that year.
Brown, it turns out, had seen enough. The rest of the staff had, too.
Callahan walked out with Brown’s granddaughter Elizabeth Blackburn, who was at her first combine working for the team, having formally come aboard earlier that month. The coach who’d worked with Peyton Manning, Matthew Stafford and Derek Carr before coming to Cincinnati, leaned over to her on the way out and said, “That’s what it sounds like.”
Burrow killed it on the board. He had a funny conversation with Brown about how fast he could cover the drive from Cincinnati to his hometown of Athens, Ohio. He owned the room.
“You could just tell this guy is wired to be a killer,” Callahan says, all this time later. “There’s just something about the way he carried himself, how he talked, what he said. Film aside, when you saw it in person, there’s just, and of course, you’ve met him over the years, there’s just something about him that you can’t really put your finger on, but you’re like …”
Callahan then paused, and added, “You know it when you see it.”
In coming days and months, Callahan, a reworked Tennessee Titans front office and his coaching staff will be looking for again. The draft is seven weeks from Thursday. Tennessee has the No. 1 pick. There may not be a Burrow in this year’s class, like there was in 2020—or even a Justin Herbert or Tua Tagovailoa. Or maybe, just maybe, Miami’s Cam Ward or Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders can be that guy.
It's on Callahan, new GM Mike Borgonzi and president of football operations Chad Brinker, among others, to figure that out. Just weeks into the new setup, with the Titans’ power structure shaken up for a third consecutive offseason, the three guys in charge may never make a bigger football decision than they will on what to do with the first pick.
And in The MMQB lead this week, we’ll take you through where they are with all this.
