Titans GM Mike Borgonzi embarks on first head coach search with no set timeline

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee Titans have had the most time in the NFL to start searching for their next head coach. General manager Mike Borgonzi has no timeline for hiring that person with the search officially underway.

“I do feel really good about the process that we’ve gone through to identify some of these candidates,” Borgonzi said Tuesday. “That’s the goal, that’s the intention, to get a head coach in here that’s going to be here for the long term and to win a lot of games.”

Borgonzi is running his first NFL head coaching search after being hired himself less than a year ago. He declined to comment on any possible candidates or even how many the Titans might interview in their search. He made clear he wants someone who can instill a culture for a franchise mired in four straight losing seasons.

“We need a leader that’s going to show up here every day here to work and really just instill that belief and instill the attention to detail, the accountability piece that we need here and the unity piece to bring everything together here in this organization,” Borgonzi said.

The Titans interviewed 10 candidates before hiring Brian Callahan in January 2024. Interim coach Mike McCoy has said he'd like to be considered for the job.

The Titans reportedly have interviews lined up for two-time AP NFL Coach of the Year Kevin Stefanski on Saturday, former Atlanta coach Raheem Morris on Sunday, Indianapolis defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo on Wednesday and Kansas City offensive coordinator Matt Nagy on Thursday.

Borgonzi knows Nagy well having spent 16 years with the Chiefs himself. Asked about public perception of being friends with a potential candidate like Nagy, Borgonzi said he has a great relationship with someone he worked with for years.

“I thought he did some good things in Chicago, and he did a lot of good things when he returned to Kansas City,” Borgonzi said. “Like all these other coaches, you have to do a ton of research on them. You still have to research on people that you know.”

With this his first head coaching search, Borgonzi said he's talked to mentors about how they decided to hire people. The search committee includes Chad Brinker, president of football operations; assistant general manager Dave Ziegler; Reggie McKenzie, a former general manager himself and currently vice president and football advisor; and vice president of player personnel Dave Saganey.

Borgonzi sees this as a very attractive job thanks to quarterback Cam Ward, four-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons and other young talent on the roster. The Titans also have a new stadium opening in 2027, the NFL's most salary cap space for 2026 and the fourth overall draft pick in April.

The Titans want someone who can help develop Ward, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 draft, and use the skills of the players on the roster.

“We’re looking for someone that can really look at Cam and, ‘This is what he does well and this is what our receivers do well. This is what our running backs do well.’ So that’s what we’re looking for,” Borgonzi said.

Ward has said he'd like to be involved as the Titans find his third coach with McCoy replacing Callahan on Oct. 13. Borgonzi said he's had a lot of conversations with the quarterback who sometimes “says a little too much.”

“Once we narrow it down, once we get down to the final candidates, maybe it’s a quick hello,” Borgonzi said. “But obviously Cam’s a big part of what we’re doing here.”

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

FILE - Tennessee Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi before the start of a football game in Nashville, Tenn, Dec. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A series of mild eruptions at the most active volcano in the Philippines has prompted the evacuation of nearly 3,000 villagers from a danger zone on its foothills, officials said Wednesday.

Authorities raised the 5-step alert around Mayon Volcano in the northeastern province of Albay to level 3 on Tuesday after detecting intermittent rockfalls, some as big as cars, from its peak crater in recent days along with deadly pyroclastic flows — a fast-moving avalanche of super-hot rock fragments, ash and gas.

Alert level 5 would indicate that a major explosive eruption, often with violent ejections of ash and debris and widespread ashfall, is underway.

“This is already an eruption, a quiet one, with lava accumulating up the peak and swelling the dome, which cracked in some parts and resulted in rockfalls, some as big as cars,” Teresito Bacolcol, the country's chief volcanologist, told The Associated Press.

He said it is too early to tell if Mayon’s restiveness would worsen and lead to a major and violent eruption given the absence of other key signs of unrest, like a spike in volcanic earthquakes and high levels of sulfur dioxide emissions.

Troops, police and disaster-mitigation personnel helped evacuate more than 2,800 villagers from 729 households inside a 6-kilometer (3.7-mile) radius from the volcano’s crater that officials have long designated a permanent danger zone, demarcated by concrete warning signs, Albay provincial officials said.

Another 600 villagers living outside the permanent danger zone have evacuated voluntarily to government-run emergency shelters to be safely away from the volcano, Claudio Yucot, regional director of the Office of Civil Defense, said.

Entry to the permanent danger zone in the volcano’s foothills is prohibited, but thousands of villagers have flouted the restrictions and made it their home or maintained farms on and off for generations. Lucrative businesses, such as sand and gravel quarrying and sightseeing tours, have also thrived openly despite the ban and the mountain’s frequent eruptions — now 54 times since records began in 1616.

The 2,462-meter (8,007-foot) volcano is one of the Philippines’ top tourism draws because of its near-perfect cone shape. But it’s also the most active of the country’s 24 restive volcanoes.

A terrifying symbol of Mayon’s deadly fury is the belfry of a 16th-century Franciscan stone church which protrudes from the ground in Albay. It’s all that’s left of a baroque church that was buried by volcanic mudflow along with the town of Cagsawa in an 1814 eruption which killed about 1,200 people, including many who sought refuge in the church, about 13 kilometers (8 miles) from the volcano.

The thousands of people who live within Mayon’s danger zone reflect the plight of many impoverished Filipinos who are forced to live in dangerous places across the archipelago — near active volcanoes like Mayon, on landslide-prone mountainsides, along vulnerable coastlines, atop earthquake fault lines, and in low-lying villages often engulfed by flash floods.

Each year, about 20 typhoons and storms batter the Philippines, which lies along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of fault lines along the Pacific Ocean basin often hit by volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

In this photo provided by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, lava flows from the crater of the Mayon volcano as alert level 3 remains raised in Albay province, north eastern Philippines on Wednesday Jan. 7, 2026. (Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology via AP)