As the Tennessee Titans move into a new era with Robert Saleh as head coach, let’s pause for a moment to ponder what might have been.
Is there an alternate reality football universe in which Amy Adams Strunk doesn’t fire Mike Vrabel two years ago, and it is the Titans who are in the AFC Championship Game just one step away from the Super Bowl with only Jarrett Stidham standing in the way?
On the one hand, it’s a stretch to think the Titans, who fell to 6-11 in Vrabel’s final season in Tennessee and have gotten progressively worse since then, could get themselves into such a position as Vrabel has put the New England Patriots in after their convincing win over Houston in the divisional playoffs.
But seeing Vrabel outside the Patriots locker room, sharing handshakes, high-fives and hugs with his players as they came through the tunnel ready to celebrate their victory, it was similar to witnessing it live when Vrabel had the Titans in 2019 pulling off a road win in Baltimore to secure a date with the Kansas City Chiefs for the right to go to the Super Bowl.
Sunday’s win by the Patriots is a reminder that Tennessee’s last “leader of men” is leading a different group right where the Titans can only wish to be.
So, could it have worked for the long haul had Vrabel been allowed to stay with the Titans and been given more say in personnel? We can only wonder.
Levis at the controls?
For that scenario to have repeated itself in Tennessee, a lot of things would have had to have gone right on Vrabel’s continued watch.
Then again, a lot of things have gone right for the Patriots this year on the heels of a 4-13 season a year ago, one in which New England was every bit as bad as the 2024 Titans, even if their record was one game better. Remember one of the Titans’ three wins that season came against the Pats.
It might have been a stretch to see Will Levis leading the Titans this far, given his regression in 2024. But Levis showed enough promise as a rookie under Vrabel that the team marketed him as the future in their coaching search that landed on Brian Callahan.
One thing is certain, Vrabel’s icy death stare would have prevented any of the backfired hero moments that Levis endured in the first two weeks of that 2024 season.
And, yes, it likely would have been Levis’ under center in a Vrabel-stays-with-Titans universe, because the assumption would be that the Titans would not have bottomed out on his watch to put themselves in a position to draft Cam Ward first overall last year.
Maybe the Titans could have put the pieces back together quickly, as they promised but failed to deliver under Ran Carthon and Callahan in 2024.
They would have had to find a replacement for Derrick Henry to carry the load at running back, and the roster would have needed upgrades across the board to get the Titans back in position to contend. Although it is certainly heartening to watch as Titans castoffs like linebacker Jack Gibbens and tight end Austin Hooper play solid roles in the Patriots’ rise back to prominence.
Different slate of coaches?
There is no doubt Vrabel can get the best out of players who have limitations, much as he did in 2021 when the Titans used a record 91 players on the way to a No. 1 seed in the AFC.
But there are also differences in Vrabel 2.0, that might not have come to fruition in Tennessee had he stayed on as head coach.
For one thing, Vrabel stubbornly clung to his coaches while guiding the Titans but seems to be more flexible and open to change in New England. After all, the work offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who’s on his third stint as Patriots OC, has done with Drake Maye has made a huge difference in the Patriots quarterback in year two.
Would the same cast of coaching characters he had on his staff in Tennessee – a number of whom are now in New England in various roles – been able to have the same success the Pats have this year?
We will never know. But enough of the what-if scenarios, the return to reality is this: Vrabel is where is he is because he is a darn good football coach, and the Titans are where they are – at the bottom of the league and searching for their second post-Vrabel coach – because they let other issues cloud their judgment on Vrabel’s abilities and they are still paying the price for it now.