What does the Mike McCoy era seem to hold for the Titans?
Sunday’s early returns were promising as McCoy centered the offense on the strengths of Cam Ward, with some play-action, some rollouts and even one play that looked like a run-pass option.
It helped for a while, as the Titans played maybe their best half of offensive football this season.
But in the second half, whatever wand McCoy waved this week to try get the Titans to play more consistent and competitive football ran out of magic. The result, another loss in which an outmanned, overmatched roster just couldn’t keep up.
McCoy finds himself in an odd situation. Given the circumstances of where the Titans are, one wouldn’t think that McCoy would be a long-term solution as the head coach. But, then again, this is Amy Adams Strunk we’re talking about, and anything is on the table.
After all, she gave the job to Mike Mularkey in 2016 after he had gone just 2-7 as interim coach. Now that move worked out better than probably almost anyone could have expected, as Mularkey showed patience with a young Marcus Mariota and turned in two winning seasons, including a playoff win, before being dumped in favor of Mike Vrabel.
But back to McCoy and whether his way of doing things can benefit the Titans going forward.
“It’s a matter of everyone going out there and all three phases playing together, help each other,” McCoy says.
He is preaching the right things, and currently the players are attempting to oblige him.
“I think Mike, he’s done an unbelievable job, especially within the circumstances that he’s in and everything he has preached to us since he was named the interim,” quarterback Cam Ward says. “And then all the way to this point, it stayed true. We want to be a hard, tough, physical football team, and we were that at times, but we weren’t that the entirety of the game.
“That’s why we got the outcome. So we got to continue to pour into the coaching staff, the coaching staff continued to pour on us and we’ve got to flip this thing around.”
The players for now are buying into McCoy’s philosophy of the Titans circling the wagons in the wake of Brian Callahan’s firing and playing for each other.
“I don’t see it dipping. We all still have a job to do. We’re playing for each other. We’re playing for the name on our chest, the organization,” center Lloyd Cushenberry says. “Also, we’re trying to represent the name on our backs. So, we all got to take pride in that and just come back to work, back to the drawing board.
“And like Coach McCoy told us, man, every Sunday is a dream. We all dreamed of being here growing up. So, you can’t take it for granted and just got to keep going.”
Many of the Titans echoed a similar line of thinking in the aftermath of their first loss under McCoy to go with a 1-5 record under Callahan.
“I think that the belief is still there within the group. And anytime you go through adversity in life, and we’re facing adversity early in the season, it definitely feels good when you’re able to come out the other side,” linebacker Cedric Gray says. “So, it’s important we get back to work this week, have a great week of preparation and go play a great game Sunday.”
McCoy might not be the change Titans fans want to see, and he might not be the change the Titans organization needs in order to right this sinking ship.
But if he can keep the players bought in throughout the remainder of a lost season, that might be his biggest win as a Titans coach.