The first text Titans GM Ran Carthon got after he was let go was from… Mike Vrabel, who was let go by the Titans one year earlier.
Carthon details his family’s bond with Vrabel & what really happened in Tennessee in a thoughtful & wide-ranging convo on @Tacklepod.
Full… pic.twitter.com/ji6o1IqTzE
— Manish Mehta (@MMehtaSports) November 12, 2025
Since the day the Tennessee Titans fired Mike Vrabel as head coach, there have been a ton of theories as to what transpired. Many outside the organization have speculated that it was a power struggle between Vrabel and then-general manager Ran Carthon, or that the two football men did not get along.
Theories have made the rounds, and it is a story that never seems to end. However, Ran Carthon recently joined the guys on the Beyond the Tackles podcast and set the record straight, and what he revealed may surprise some Titans fans.
“There was never a moment where we didn’t get along. And truth be told, my daughter—she’s just got home from practice, she’s walking through the house—probably the first few months after Vrabel got let go, like the screensaver on her phone was a picture of her and Vrabel from pregame because they had a really close, unique relationship. But you know, like I said, the day I got let go, the very first text message I got was from Vrabel.”
The fact that Vrabel was the first person to reach out to him when he was abruptly fired following the 2024 season, and that the two men and their families are close, contradicts many of the reports that came out of Nashville when Carthon was in charge and Vrabel was let go.
That revelation is also an indictment of those who remain within the organization’s hierarchy, specifically Chad Brinker and owner Amy Adams Strunk, that has helped push the Titans further down the spiral. While both Vrabel and Carthon made mistakes during their time with the Titans, their continued failures on the field prove that the issues went deeper than them.