Cincinnati Bengals Team | Bengals.com

Brian Callahan
Offensive Coordinator
College: UCLA
Hometown: Champaign, Ill.
Biography
Brian Callahan enters his 14th NFL season and his fifth in Cincinnati in 2023. He joined the Bengals as offensive coordinator prior to the 2019 season.
Brian Callahan enters his 14th NFL season and his fifth in Cincinnati in 2023. He joined the Bengals as offensive coordinator prior to the 2019 season.
In 2021, Callahan oversaw a talented young offense that ranked seventh in the NFL in passing yards (259.0 per game) and eighth in points (27.1). QB Joe Burrow, returning from a knee injury sustained in his rookie year, led the league in completion percentage (70.4), while setting single-season franchise records for passing yardage (4611), TD passes (34) and passer rating (108.3).
Callahan also worked with a pair of 1000-yard WRs in Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. Chase, the team's first-round draft pick in 2021, was named NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year after recording the most receiving yards by a rookie in the Super Bowl era (1455), to go with 13 TDs. Higgins added 1091 receiving yards in his second season. On the ground, RB Joe Mixon ranked in the top five in the NFL in rushing yards (1205, third) and rushing TDs (13, fourth).
In 2020, Callahan helped transition Burrow, the No. 1 overall pick in the draft, to the pro level despite the absence of an in-person offseason program due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Before a knee injury ended his season in Week 11, Burrow's 264 completions were the most ever by an NFL QB through their first 10 career games, while his 2688 passing yards were fifth.
In 2019, his first Bengals season, Callahan helped Cincinnati's rushing average rise 70.6 yards from the first half of the season (59.5) to the second (130.1). In the passing game, each of the team's top four WRs — Boyd, Alex Erickson, Auden Tate and John Ross III — posted career highs in both receptions and receiving yards.
Prior to his arrival in Cincinnati, Callahan was quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders in 2018. He helped QB Derek Carr to a then-career-high 4049 passing yards and an AFC-best 68.9 completion percentage.
Prior to his season in Oakland, Callahan was quarterbacks coach with the Detroit Lions from 2016-17. Over the course of his two seasons, QB Matthew Stafford ranked in the top 10 among NFL passers in TD passes (53), passing yards (8773), completions (759) and completion percentage (65.5).
In 2017, Stafford ranked third in the NFL in passing yards (4446) and fourth in passing TDs (29). In 2016, he engineered an NFL-best eight game-winning drives in the fourth quarter, the most by a QB in a single season since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger.
Callahan began his NFL coaching career with the Denver Broncos, spending six years with the club in a multitude of offensive roles. He entered in 2010 as a coaching assistant, then moved to offensive quality control from '11-12, offensive assistant from '13-14, and offensive assistant/quarterbacks coach in '15.
During his run with the Broncos, Callahan helped mold one of the NFL's most potent offenses, which led the Broncos to five consecutive AFC West titles from 2011-15, and a victory in Super Bowl 50.
Callahan also helped the Broncos' offense to four consecutive seasons (2012-15) of 4000 passing yards. Denver's QB during Callahan's tenure was Hall-of-Famer Peyton Manning, who as a Bronco won NFL MVP honors in 2013 after throwing an NFL-record 55 TD passes. Denver also set a league-record in points (606) and had the second most yards per game (457.3) in NFL history.
Prior to joining the NFL coaching ranks, Callahan spent two years (2008-09) at Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo, Calif., as the team's offensive coordinator and QBs coach. His first coaching experience came in 2006-07, as a graduate assistant at UCLA, where he served in football operations in '06, and then worked with the WRs in '07.
Callahan played collegiately at UCLA, where as a former walk-on QB he appeared in 13 games as a holder on PATs. He earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from UCLA in 2006, and a masters in education in '08.
The son of former Raiders head coach (2002-03) Bill Callahan, Brian Callahan was born in Champaign, Ill., but attended high school in California in the Bay Area. He was a two-year letter winner at De La Salle High School in Concord, Calif., where he was a part of the school's national-record 151-game winning streak and led the team to a No. 1 national ranking. Callahan and his wife, Allyson, have a son, Ronan, and daughter, Norah.