The lessons Bengals OC Brian Callahan learned from his father to make it to the NFL

Cincinnati Bengals offensive coordinator Brian Callahan was born in Champaign, Illinois, but he doesn’t remember anything about living there. After two years, he went to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he recollects a few images of the house he lived in and the dome where the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks played.

By the time he started middle school, Brian had lived in Carbondale, Illinois, Madison, Wisconsin and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Brian was a coach’s son, and that meant he moved five times before going to college.

When Brian then went into coaching, he knew exactly what he was getting into. 

His father, Bill Callahan, became the head coach of the Oakland Raiders in the early 2000s and is now the Cleveland Browns offensive line coach. On Sunday, Brian Callahan’s Bengals will face Bill Callahan’s Browns.

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Heading into the game, Brian remembers the advice Bill gave him in 2007 when Brian told him he wanted to be a football coach.

“You know the sacrifices you have to make,” Bill told his son. “If you want to do this, you have to make those sacrifices. I’ll support you in any way I can, but the thing is, you know what this life is.”

At the time, Brian was a graduate assistant at UCLA. After finishing college as a backup quarterback with the Bruins, Brian received a chance to stay involved with UCLA football. Brian wanted to be an athletic director, and he saw this as a way to get his foot in the door.

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When head coach Karl Dorrell offered him the graduate assistant position, Brian thought, “I haven’t really thought much about coaching, but what the (heck)? I’ll go to grad school and get a graduate degree at UCLA. If I like coaching, so be it.”

It turned out that Brian loved the work he was doing more than he expected. Since he was a quarterback at De La Salle High School in California, Brian had been around football players heading to the NFL. As he earned a master’s degree in education, he figured out what he really wanted to do was to be a coach like Bill.

He said he got “bit by the coaching bug,” and then he had to tell his parents. He called his mom first.

“She was not very happy about it,” Brian said. “She goes, ‘You’ll have two degrees at UCLA, you can do anything you want. I can’t believe you want to do this. You need to talk to your dad. I can’t believe, of all the things you want to do with your life, you want to coach football.”

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Brian’s next call was to Bill, who was the head coach at the University of Nebraska at the time. After Brian got his parents’ support, he had to get something even more difficult. A job.

At the time, Bill told Brian that he’d have an opportunity at Nebraska for him if he wanted it, but he didn’t recommend that he take it. 

“I didn’t want my first job to be from my dad,” Brian said. “I never really wanted my dad to give me a job, either. I never wanted to work for him. I always wanted to work with him at some point, but his advice was to earn your own way in the profession. I think I did.”

Brian wrote letters to every NFL team. He went to a few small college campuses for interviews. When he got no offers, Brian called one of his former high school coaches, Patrick Walsh, who had become the head coach at Serra High School in San Mateo, California.

“You get humbled a lot in life,” Brian said. “I couldn’t afford to not teach, and I just wanted to coach football. I told him, ‘If you have a place for me, I’d appreciate you thinking about it.”

In 2009, Brian worked in Serra High School’s academic resource center. After school, he was the freshman team’s offensive coordinator. It might have been the most demanding job Brian has had –– some of the football players didn’t know how to run a play, didn’t know how to get in a stance and didn’t know how to put their shoulder pads on.

“It was a formative experience coaching wise when you line up with a bunch of 13 year olds, half of which had never played football before,” Brian said. “You can’t assume that these guys know anything about football, and it forces you to teach them the bare bones all the way up.”

Serra High School quarterback Cody Jackson improved enough with Brian to play college football at Army. Jackson was Brian’s first quarterback, and Brian called him one of his best success stories.

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During this stretch of his career, Brian also worked quarterback camps across the country. At many of them, Brian worked closely with Zac Taylor, who became the Bengals head coach one decade later. Bill Callahan was Taylor’s head coach at Nebraska, so Brian and Taylor already knew each other.

Heading into the 2010 season, Denver Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels needed an offensive quality control coach. Broncos video coordinator Steve Scarnecchia had worked with Bill, and he saw Brian as an up-and-coming coach. Scarnecchia got Brian’s resume on McDaniels’ desk, which led to two interviews and a visit to Denver.

Finally, Brian made it to the NFL.

“It’s the most fun job, and I don't know if I could do anything else,” Brian said. “There’s nothing like the ability to teach and have influence on players. And there’s nothing like the competition at the highest level on game days.”

Brian stayed on the Broncos staff through 2015, outlasting a head coaching change and getting the opportunity to coach quarterback Peyton Manning. In 2016, Brian left to become the Detroit Lions quarterbacks coach. After a stop in Oakland, Taylor hired Brian in Cincinnati in 2019.

Even though Brian will coach against Bill on Sunday, they’ll still talk this week. On Wednesday, Brian texted Bill photos of Brian’s kids, Ronan and Norah. They were dressed up in their Halloween costumes as Chase and Liberty from the cartoon Paw Patrol.

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When the NFL’s coronavirus restrictions aren’t necessary, Brian said the Bengals coaching staff plans to have a “family night” around the office where the kids come to work once a week. That was how Brian learned about football at Northern Arizona, Southern Illinois and Wisconsin.

And now he wants to give Ronan and Norah the same opportunity in Cincinnati.

“You hope to stick somewhere for a while, have some success and really enjoy it and be a part of a community,” Brian said. “You’re always trying to build something sustainable you can build and enjoy.”