Jim Mashek

IMPENDING ARRIVAL OF FORMER TITANS COACH MIKE VRABEL AND THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS CREATES SENSE OF PANIC IN NASHVILLE

It was January 4, 2020, on a cold, blustery night at Gillette Stadium, located in Foxboro, roughly halfway between the sports obsessed city of Boston and the more measured Providence, Rhode Island, when the Tennessee Titans were clearly on the verge of going places.

Former coach Mike Vrabel’s Titans squad was a five-point underdog against superstar quarterback Tom Brady and the wildly successfuly New England Patriots. Little was expected of the Titans that season, with retread quarterback Ryan Tannehill leading second-year coach Vrabel’s bunch into Gillette for perhaps the biggest upset of the 2019-20 NFL playoffs.

Then, poof, the Titans struck for a tense 20-13 victory. Brady would never play for the Patriots again, but he went on to win his seventh Super Bowl — in 10 tries, mind you — in his second season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Bill Belichick wouldn’t last much longer, as the Patriots’ head coach, departing after a dismal 4-13 season in 2023.

The world was the Titans’ oyster, or so it seemed.

Vrabel’s Tennessee squad traveled to Baltimore, to square off with flashy quarterback Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens, and the Titans rolled to a 28-12 victory to reach the AFC championship game.

The Titans played for a Super Bowl berth, the next week, and bowed out of the NFL playoffs with a 35-24 road loss to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs.

The Titans were able to build on that success, going 11-5 in regular-season play in 2020, followed by a quick exit in the wild-card round against Jackson and the Ravens. The next year, the Titans were actually the No. 1 seed in the AFC, the conference’s only team to earn a first-round bye under the revised 17-game NFL regular-season schedule.

And they lost.

Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals strolled into Nashville’s Nissan Stadium and slipped past Mike Vrabel’s Titans squad, 19-16. The Titans’ defense recorded nine sacks that night and STILL LOST THE GAME.

And nothing has gone right for the frazzled Titans organization ever since.

Mike Vrabel lasted two more seasons in Nashville, losing 21 of his final 34 games with the Titans.

On Sunday, Vrabel will be riding high as he makes his triumphant return to Nissan Stadium. He’s in his second season as New England’s head coach after spending eight seasons of his distinguished 14-year playing career as a versatile linebacker.

The Titans made the inevitable move on Monday afternoon, parting ways with second-year head coach Brian Callahan after a dismal 1-5 start. The Titans returned to Nashville from a 20-10 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders in Sin City, and Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk decided to cut bait with the overmatched Callahan heading into Sunday’s home game against Vrabel and the Patriots.

Former San Diego Chargers head coach Mike McCoy takes over for Brian Callahan, on an interim basis, and the Patriots are favored by a touchdown in Sunday’s game at Nissan Stadium.

(I’m more than a little tempted to boogie down to Music City and buy a ticket, and see this spectacle for myself. I haven’t bothered to apply for credentials to Titans home games, since launching jimmashek.com in 2021, but the Music City Bowl wouldn’t credential me the next year, when the University of Kentucky was paired against the Iowa Hawkeyes.)

Will Levis, the Kentucky quarterback in 2022, decided to opt out of the bowl game, and prepare for the NFL Draft. Veteran UK coach Mark Stoops took his team to Nashville, where Iowa mopped the floor with the Wildcats to the tune of 21-0.

A few months later, the Titans made Levis the 33rd overall pick, a second-round choice, and the wheels for the team’s inevitable collapse were set in motion.

The late Bud Adams — the miserly owner of the NFL’s Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans franchise until his death in 2013 — mismanaged one crisis after another, both in Houston and in Nashville. And his daughter, the 70-year-old Amy Adams Strunk, has continued that dubious tradition.

Derrick Henry? Gone. A.J. Brown? History. Mike Vrabel? Doin’ his thing in New England.

On his way to Nashville, for Sunday afternoon’s game with the Titans.

Maybe Strunk will be there.

There’s a good chance she will pass, like she did for Monday afternoon’s press conference at the Titans training facility at Saint Thomas Sports Park.

Chad Brinker, the Titans’ president of football operations, and general manager Mike Borgonzi met with the media to discuss the move, with Brinker attempting to explain Amy Adams Strunk’s absence from the press conference with this little gem:

“Amy has entrusted me to make tough decisions in this organzation. And working with Mike (Borgonzi) and I, and meeting with her this morning, and talking through all this … we just felt like this was the right time to make a change.”

Uh-huh.

Shed no tears for Brian Callahan.

He’s set for life, if he never coaches another down. He’ll pull in a cool $10 million from the Titans, unless he were to take another NFL job, and don’t be surprised if that actually happens. NFL coaches embrace the challenge, and generally speaking, they like to work. Brian Callahan’s father, Bill Callahan, is a former NFL head coach who guided the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl back in the early 2000s.

And Bill Callahan is also on the Titans’ coaching staff, a veteran offensive line coach.

(Right next to the colossal White Elephant otherwise known as the Titans’ next home, an indoor stadium that has further complicated traffic and other infrastructure elements in Downtown Nashville and beyond. But that’s another story, for another day.)

Since December 6, 2022, Amy Adams Strunk has fired TWO general managers — Jon Robinson and Ran Carthon — while also handing Mike Vrabel his walking papers.

Why should we expect her to show up for Vrabel’s return to his ol’ stomping grounds?

We shouldn’t.

It all starts at the top, in the NFL, and Amy Adams Strunk has taken her team straight to the bottom of the Cumberland River.

Sunday’s game against Vrabel and the Patriots might be fun.

For everybody except the Titans and their loyal, passionate fan base.

Sell the team, Amy. It’s the only solution.