Everything's new for Brian Callahan's Tennessee Titans. That's why Sunday was so emotional

Tennessee Titans quarterback Mason Rudolph hopes his coach, Brian Callahan, kicks back and enjoys Sunday night.

"I can only imagine what he’s got to juggle with calling plays and doing a good job at it," Rudolph said after the 20-17 overtime win against the New England Patriots. "Calling plays, being present for the defense, situational on both sides of the ball. I think he needs to have a cold one tonight to take the edge off and enjoy himself."

Everything, Rudolph says, is a first for Callahan this year. His first season as the Titans' head coach is, in so many ways, about the Titans embracing newness. A new offense. New philosophies. New culture.

But before Sunday, most of that newness came packaged with failure. The Titans (2-6) went in as one of the NFL's worst teams, riding a three-game losing streak, coming off back-to-back embarrassing blowouts, struggling to find even the smallest reason to make fans feel a bit confident about the future.

Maybe that's why Callahan teared up twice talking about how important this win was for him in his postgame news conference.

"We talk about it all the time, just the type of team we want to be," he said. "I think that’s one of our strengths is how our team fights. The physical nature they play with. We finally put ourselves in position to win a game. Really what’s happened prior to here is we’ve taken the game out of our hands and given it away. We finally didn’t do that. This was the result. It was just really good to see."

Let's try to put the Titans' struggles into the most reductive perspective possible. Going into Sunday, they held or were tied for the lead at the end of 15 of the 28 quarters. If a quarter ended, the score was either neutral or favored the Titans more than half the time. Despite this, the Titans had one win. That means if it was the first, second or third quarter, the Titans had a 67% chance to be winning or in a tie. If it was the fourth quarter, the Titans had a 14% chance to be winning or in a tie.

So Sunday pretty much followed the same recipe. The Titans led after one quarter. The Titans led after two quarters. The Titans were tied after three quarters. Then things got weird in the fourth quarter. And the time of the game where the Titans usually fold crept into focus.

Here's where one of those new experiences in the Callahan era clicked. The Titans didn't fold.

"We talked about it a while back: Just coming off the field or on the sideline, if you smack somebody’s hand and tell them, ‘Let’s go, I’ve got your back,’ that means something," defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons said. "That’s where when things get tough, we can rely on each other. At the end of the day, a connected team, that’s going to last at the end."

Titans coaches and front office personnel spent the better part of the past week drawing comparisons between the team's circumstances in Callahan's first year and the circumstances the San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions and Cincinnati Bengals endured in the first years of Kyle Shanahan's, Dan Campbell's and Zac Taylor's tenures, respectively. Those three coaches went a combined 0-24 in September and October before finishing a much more respectable 11-13-1 in November and onward.

This win marked the first game of Callahan's first November.

A lot will have to go right for those comparisons to survive scrutiny. The Titans have the 10th-toughest remaining schedule in the NFL, including four straight games against would-be playoff teams in the next four weeks.

But a little confidence and a little bit of proof-of-concept goes a long way.

"It can be good," defensive tackle T'Vondre Sweat said. "This is the start of our journey."

Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at[email protected]. Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.