The firing of Jon Robinson last season will buy coach Mike Vrabel some time to get the rebuild going in earnest for the rest of this season and next year.
And while the national media seems to have Vrabel already buying a house in Foxboro and replacing Bill Belichick in New England, I wouldn’t look for that to happen this offseason.
Vrabel just recently moved upward in the hierarchy with Robinson having been moved out, so owner Amy Adams Strunk should be patient enough to see what Vrabel and general manager Ran Carthon do to fix this broken franchise.
That said, the Titans are headed into a critical offseason, and if the same conversation about needing to improve is still being had next year at this time, it might be a different story.
Even with a $100 million in cap space and a full allotment of draft picks, it still might not be possible to fill all the holes that currently exist on this Titans roster.
But what Vrabel and Carthon have to do first is make this team competitive again, a process that’s already happening with two of their top division rivals.
Few if any would have believed that with five games left in the season that both the Indianapolis Colts and Houston Texans would be on track to possibly make the playoffs. But that is exactly what has happened.
Both the Colts and Texans are far from finished products, but both are finding ways to win. Both are 7-5 and in the thick of the race for the postseason. Who would have thought that the AFC South might produce three playoff teams this year with Indy and Houston as possible wild cards behind division leader Jacksonville?
Which brings us back to the Titans. Yes, Vrabel and Carthon will get time to execute their plan to fix what is wrong. But that plan now involves trying to catch all three division rivals.