Brian Callahan Wasn’t The Issue For The Titans | MMQB

Brian Callahan Wasn’t The Issue For The Titans | MMQB

The Titans made a coaching change. Albert, you rattled uh uh Titans Nation, by the way. I was on a uh I was on a Titans pod uh yesterday, and I didn’t know that you stepped on a little bit of a hornets nest here and saying that uh there was uh your take was that they that the the root cause of all these issues is much deeper and that firing Brian Kellen isn’t going to fix anything. I I Well, it could. Um, but like it’s only going to fix something if they give somebody the time and runway to do the job, you know, and I think um, you know, this is another one where ownership has become the problem where like and if you can’t see it, you’re not looking because this is four changes like and substantial changes that are all happening separately. In other words, like sure, if you were hiring, if you were firing head coach and GM, if it happened twice in three, like then that’s a lot, but not the most unusual thing. What’s unusual about this one is, and we can go through the timeline really quick, right? December 22, they fire John Robinson. Then January of 24, they fire Mike Vrabel. Then they promote at that they promote at that point, they’d hired Ran Caron to replace Robinson. They promote Chad Brinker, the assistant GM, over Ran Carthon. Then a year after that, they fire Ran Carthon and now they fire Brian Callahan. So, it’s just a lot of change over the course of I think it’s 34 months if you count it up. And like I I think what most people who’ve been around Amy Adam would tell you, she does not like being embarrassed. Now, that’s the way a lot of billionaires are, right? Like they don’t like being embarrassed. Um, but she it’s it’s another case, I think, in this day and age of Like it is hard to avoid criticism if you’re an NFL team because of the spotlight that’s on every one of them and how every day like the state of your organization is litigated, right? And you need to have strength to fight through those things and they haven’t shown that strength. So like I’m not saying again like did all these things have to happen? Maybe. But like let’s just like look at what happened here over the course of time, right? So they fired John Robinson. It’s no coincidence that was two days after AJ Brown went off on them. Right. Right. So they fire John Robinson. So Amy Amy Amy Adam Strunk has her pound of flesh to bring back to the fan base like, “Hey, like we got you.” Right. So then they hire Anthon to replace him a month later. They give Mike Vrabel a ton of personnel power at that point and say like, “Okay, like this is Mike’s show now. They go with that for a year. After a year, they feel like Mike has taken the building and turned it into like this is like my people, like my way, my people. She doesn’t like coming into work every day now. So, a year after you’ve leaned into Mike Vrabel, you don’t like the way that Mike Vrabel is making the building feel. You don’t like walking into the building on a day-to-day basis. You feel like your business people, maybe some of the other people involved, aren’t as happy. And so now you pull the plug on Mike Vrabel and say we need a total organizational overhaul, right? So then you promote Chad Brinker over Rancon, right, to lead that overhaul. So then you have the worst team in the So So, so then you hire Brian Callahan. You have the worst team in the league last year. Well, now somebody has to pay for that. So you fire Ran Carthon, right? And now it’s like after all the noise and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of like that a lot of family members were in the building in Vegas over the weekend, right? This is when you pull the plug on Brian Callahan. Again, I’m not saying in a vacuum it was wrong to fire John Robinson. It was wrong to fire Mike Frabel. It was wrong to fire Brian Callahan. It was wrong to fire Ran Carthon. But this is how organizations wind up being ruerless. I can say I think it was wrong to fire John Robinson and Mike Vrabel. I mean, imagine where they would be. Well, I mean, hold on to both of them, you know? I mean, well, here’s the thing. Like, so I look at like I went back and looked at this earlier in the week, okay? Like, let’s just look at like the body of work for John Robinson and Mike Frael really quick. I know it’s crazy. All right. They won two games in 201 14. They won three games in 2015. That was what John Robinson was walking into. John Robinson also inherited Marcus Mariota as a second overall pick. So he had no choice in who his quarterback was going to be. Right. Right. John Robinson had winning teams his first six years in a row in charge there despite the fact that Mariota didn’t work out that he had to find another answer at quarterback without having a high pick to use on it. Right. So he took a team that had won five games in the last two years combined that had been five and 27 over the last over the two years previous and immediately started reeling off winning seasons. He hired Mike Vrabel. Mike Vrabel comes in in the third year of that. Mike Vrabel his first year wins nine games. They just missed the playoffs. His second year they go to the AFC title game. And then his third and fourth years they win the division. Right? This is what Ryan Tanahill at quarterback. And then that core that they had a Taylor Luan and Kevin Bard and and Jeffrey Sim like like a lot of that core starts to age out and as that core ages out, right? Okay. Like now, you know, you hit the skids a little bit, but even then they won seven games and six games in like in in Mike Frabel’s last two years. Yeah. So, like it still wasn’t a train wreck. Was it as good? No. But had those guys done enough to merit the chance to rebuild it? 100%. Right. Yeah. And you can say that there was some friction between Robinson and Varel, and I’m not going to argue with you on that, but that’s Isn’t that the owner’s job to manage that? Well, it’s the owner’s job to ma to manage it. And friction, I mean, friction can become passive aggressive and it can become cancerous or whatever you want to call it, but at the same time, like friction’s good. I mean, you want to have a healthy discussion about players. I mean, look at what which is like part of the problem is like she’s not there dayto day. So, she’s coming in once or twice a month into the office and sounds like me. I don’t um and I’m walking into the off I live in Texas. I’m going into the office in Tennessee. Oh, this I I don’t like the feel in the building. I don’t like the way Well, like, do you have the full context of that? No, you don’t because you’re not there every day. And if you’re talking to people on the business side or there’s somebody that maybe doesn’t like Mike V. Well, if your point of context is like you’re talking to two or three people um on a consistent basis and that person happens to not like the very competent people that you’ve put in charge, I it’s just it’s almost like I I don’t know. I mean, like I I look like I’ve heard she’s moving to Tennessee soon and maybe some of this changes, but I do think like this requires a look in the mirror. This requires her taking a hard look at what she’s done here. And I think empowering Chad Brinker and Mike Borgani now and saying, “It’s your show. You got three years. I’m not touching it.” You know what I mean? Because clearly like this you we’ve crit we’ve we criticized Woody Johnson last year and rightfully so for reacting to what’s happening on Twitter. I think the same sort of thing’s happening there. I think that maybe not specifically Twitter but like the same sort of thing like where it’s like I’m embarrassed by the state of my franchise. I’ve been humiliated in front of my family members. I like I need to do something. Um, and part of being an owner is being able to withstand like people making fun of you on social media. And again, like I’m not saying Cali would have dug them out of it, but I can tell you this, like people in that building like had basically come like like a couple weeks ago it was, you know, is this coming to an end at the end of the year? Probably. But it doesn’t do us any good to like doesn’t do us any good to to go to an interim coach here, right? Um we’re probably going to lose Bill Callahan if we lose Brian Callahan. So we lose a great offensive line coach in an area that we’re trying to rebuild. Um I think they’d sort of made the decision like it makes more sense to ride it out anyway. So like it’s not toxic. The players like Callahan. Maybe they’re not responding to him the same way, but they like him. Um I I just don’t know what the benefit of doing this is. And maybe we’ll find on Mon on Sunday that they go out and they beat and I don’t think that part of it can be ignored either, right? Like who they’re playing on Sunday. Do you want the intern bump for Mike Rabel coming to town? Right. Right. Well, I mean like essentially it’s like it’s harder to say like, well, look at the state of your franchise. What a mess. And you hired all the wrong people when you have an interimm head coach. when you have an interim head coach when you’ve already sort of taken steps to rectify your previous mistakes. So I it’s just I don’t know. I mean I I I like like again like this is going to come off as a defense of of all those guys who got fired, but like I don’t know if she knows what she’s looking for. Here’s what I think is there’s a couple interesting things from this and then I want to spin it forward and and kind of get your your short list because um I made one I tried to make a short list and it ended up being a long list. Um but when you have 11 weeks to hire a coach, it should be a long list should be an expansive list of uh of coaches that you’re looking for. The one quick thing I have and I’m working on a big special team story and this kind of came up was the fact that Bones Fossil, who you was an interimm head coach for the Rams before when Jeff. Yeah. Um and and special teams was always the go-to for elevating uh an interm because it was perceived that almost like you know not that you have less to do, right? It’s the least disruptive quarter. Yeah. But now, uh, we are in this like special teams upheaval, right? And special team, I would argue that special teams coordinators have one of the hardest jobs now, um, in the NFL. And so, you can’t just, you know, you can’t just elevate the special teams coordinator anymore. Now, Mike McCoy had head coaching experience. It made a lot of sense. He was on the roster, too. Um anyway, and but I just thought that was interesting and I do wonder if we see that happen throughout the year if teams will continue doing that because again like special teams coordinators are underwater right now, man. Like this is you know this is like a historic season for kick blocks, returns, like kickoffs. I mean they they need all the time that they could get. Yep. And like the normalization of like the 60 yard field goal which is bananas. Like it’s just it seems like as much as we were going that direction to begin with that’s just accelerated now. Like I can’t remember ever seeing like a 55 yard be so routine. You know what I mean? Like we’re attempting them more regularly than at any time in uh in league history. And stay tuned. You should subscribe to the magazine because we might have something uh about that coming down the pike. Yeah. My my short list and so I texted a bunch of really quick like on McCoy. I do think one thing that’s interesting is what this will mean for Cam Ward. I just like I’ll just say this like I think his experience with different types of quarterbacks going all the way back to Jake Del Carolina Peyton Manning Tim Tibo he’s like worked with a wide variety Philip Ivers wide variety of quarterbacks I think Mike is going to let Cam be himself like I think that there’s going to be an element of just if you don’t see it fast enough just go make a play and I think that like we’re going to see an exciting version of Cam Ward at least on Sunday and we’ll see what it looks like going forward.

Conor Orr and Albert Breer break down the firing of Tennessee Titans head coach Brian Callahan and why the bad front office decision making has made a contender turn into the league’s worst team in a short period of time