So, it’s been almost two weeks since the Titans had their press conference announcing the hiring of Jon Robinson as general manager and Mike Mularkey as permanent head coach, and yours truly, alleged Titans blogger, has yet to weigh in in long form on the subject. There are reasons I could point to for not yet having done so-the need to peruse, take notes on, and digest the local media blitz, for one-but it’s past time for me to comment on those various issues.
Because of my sloth/indigence/other things to do, you’re getting my thoughts in one post, in which I attempt to be semi-comprehensive and touch on a number of topics. Because the hirings and both men touched on a number of different areas, I’ll be covering a lot of ground in this post. Think of it as my attempt to condense two weeks’ worth of blogging into one post. I won’t write as much as I most likely would have if this were coming to you as three, five, seven separate posts on different subjects I’ll touch on here, but I tend to run excessively long as is and doubt the brevity will matter all that much, at least once we reach the frozen iceball stage of things.
The Searches
The Titans at least put some effort into the general manager search. They interviewed candidates with the sort of record in personnel and scouting they indicated they preferred, but that’s part of your standard GM search starter kit. In that sextet, they interviewed people with experience as a GM for past teams and neophytes with a limited track record like the man they eventually hired, Jon Robinson. Any successful candidate will eventually be judged on his ability to acquire talented, and Robinson’s fate will be no different as long as he is at least not-publicly-embarrassingly-bad at the rest of the tasks an NFL GM in Tennessee will be asked to perform (which tasks Steve Underwood made so much hay of at the end of season press conference).
The coaching search, well, you could turn that into a running joke about things that took more effort than it. The Packers-Cardinals overtime coin toss, the video of sadness, maybe even my excuses for why I hadn’t written a post lately (well, maybe not that). The optimistic side of me (yes, there really is one, and I do try to be over-optimistic as often as I am over-pessimistic) wanted to dismiss the media reports (always unsourced, like those Underwood has repeatedly been so dismissive of contemplating a sale of the Titans in the near future) that hiring Mularkey was a foregone conclusion and any search would be a sham.
And, there it was, they hired Mularkey after doing a sham of a search. Underwood predictably defended his employers-the laugh line of the press conference was his comment that he didn’t remember suggesting the Titans would possibly interview more than two candidates outside the organization. He did confirm the list of 155 potential head coaching candidates he mentioned at the season-ending presser was just what you thought it was, everybody who met a list of specified criteria that would be available for the Titans to interview. Most of those candidates were under consideration that made that paid to one of the “Wait, he’s actually running?” Republican candidates seem like the attention paid to Trump.
The most interesting thing I listened to about the head coaching search was Underwood’s appearance with 104.5’s 3HL show from November the week after the Titans fired Mike Mularkey. Asked about what the Titans were looking for in their next head coach, he cited particularly somebody with an offensive background and a relationship with Dick LeBeau, whom I believe the organization valued quite highly. Depending on how much leeway you give that, there are approximately four potential head coaching candidates who fit that bill. The Titans weren’t about to re-hire Ken Whisenhunt two months after firing him, so he was out. I can’t see the Titans hiring Todd Haley. The third candidate was LeBeau’s offensive coordinator when he was head coach of the Bengals, Bob Bratkowski, whose name will be mentioned again. The fourth was Mike Mularkey. Foregone. Conclusion.
That of course played into the GM search. Ted Sundquist, one of the interviewees, went on the record in his very interesting article that ownership was pretty much locked into a Mularkey hire, and any potential GM had to accept that as a fait accompli. I don’t quite know why Robinson took the job, aside from he immediately (after accepting the job!) developed an easy rapport with Mularkey, but that’s his decision.
On Jon Robinson
I’m a bit surprised by the fit on two accounts, first that Robinson accepted the Titans job when he was still young (days short of his 40th birthday when hired) and second, I thought the Titans were ripe for a GM retread, to add to the organizational stability. Any GM retread of course brings with it the inevitable “you drafted that guy LOL” buzz, but you see plenty of retread coaching hires about whom similar things could easily be said. Just take a look at Whisenhunt and Mularkey’s track records.
As I said, though, Robinson’s tenure and eventual fate will largely be decided by his ability to evaluate personnel, which is supposed to be his prime area of expertise. This doesn’t really set him apart from most of those other GM candidates-see above re the starter pack-let alone many failed GMs. He gets a big TBD on this.
Like I said in the hiring post, a lot of the other criteria for his job will be outside public view in its actions and perhaps even the end results. One question is whether there’s too much New England in him-the Bill Belichick experience is pretty much sui generis, and he’s worked for the Patriots and for another Patriots guy in Tampa Bay where the head coach had a lot of authority. Different job, different responsibilities, different skill sets required. Even on-paper great candidates fail there, and in many areas outside of football. We’ll see.
On Mike Mularkey
While Underwood had the line of the press conference, I found Mularkey’s comments on the whole more exasperating. Underwood was repeating a bunch of nonsense he had to be aware enough were absolute nonsense. Mularkey, well, I threw these two quotes out on Twitter previously, but they struck me:
1. Ken Whisenhunt, at his final press conference, on why he didn’t have as much quick success as other recently-hired head coaches: “Have you looked at their rosters? Have you looked at their situations?”
2. Mike Mularkey, at his introductory presser, on why he didn’t have success in his previous head coaching stops in Buffalo and Jacksonville: “circumstances, they dictate a lot of success for people and they also dictate sometimes failure.”
I’m not saying, I’m just saying… and the way they talked about their records sounded like it came out of the same book.
Like he did at the presser announced he was named interim head coach, a more introspective sort like yours truly would note that real introspection doesn’t seem to be a particular strength of most NFL head coaches. Most generously, I’m reminded of the line from The Up Side of Down, “There’s a scientific name for people with an especially accurate perception of how talented, attractive, and popular they are—we call them ‘clinically depressed.'” This is touching on a significantly larger issue than my blogging here or anything else I’m ready and willing to engage in too much public debate on, but optimism, even from the outside silly-seeming optimism, is a big key to a lot of progress. Whisenhunt declared he was a good coach and his stuff worked even in the face of what came to be overwhelming evidence what he was doing was not, in fact, working in Tennessee. Mularkey similarly declared his quality as a coach and doesn’t seem to have, or at least acknowledge, any significant change from who he is as a head coach from his failures in Buffalo, Jacksonville, and as interim coach of the Titans. There’s obviously a blend between not trying to being something you’re not and trying to be the best version of yourself, but what seemed to ultimately sink Whisenhunt was he was the same version of himself that had not been successful in previous stops. What I heard from Mularkey made me think the same thing about him.
Mularkey’s record, I don’t know how much it’s worth getting into it. I’ve tried to stress he got fired in Jacksonville because they didn’t seem him as the right person to lead a team into the next era, not because he went 2-14 with a really awful team. Buffalo, the cited defense is he succeeded in 2004, going 9-7 and nearly making the playoffs; to that I’d note, (a) the Bills finished 21st in offensive DVOA (I write for Football Outsiders perma-disclaimer), so it’s not like the offense was actually good, and (b) the Bills missed the playoffs because they lost to the Steelers’ backups in Week 17. Not a good look. One thing I’d guess Mularkey learned from both those experiences, though, is the importance of managing upwards; he was undone in Buffalo because the ownership wanted to take the franchise a different direction and imposed changes on his staff, and his firing in Jacksonville obviously had similar reasons (and N.B. new Jaguars GM David Caldwell had worked in Atlanta’s front office when Mularkey was the OC there).
On the Team Robinson and Mularkey Will (Try to) Build
Cliche-meter was at 9.9 here, as they both talked about wanting coachable, physical, smart players with a team-first attitude. Those were really Robinson’s catch-phrases, repeated endlessly (besides the 7000 words of the presser, I had 5400 words worth of radio interview notes from J-Rob and heard that plenty).
Mularkey spoke of his offense, citing his in Atlanta and his time back as Pittsburgh’s offensive coordinator when Jeff Fisher had more winning seasons than losing ones (no, really). Basically, think what he tried to do for a young Matt Ryan, and more along the lines of what I thought the Titans might have tried to do for Mariota’s rookie season. I’ll go into more detail on what he did in Atlanta when I started the positional analysis series (the fullback one is always a good dumping point for this sort of thing). Deception, balance, good tempo (not necessarily fast, and this is another thing I’ll try to remember to address when I get to that), and overall more user-friendly for Mariota. I’d also expect to see more plays designed to take advantage of Mariota’s mobility, which is something it felt like we already did see more of after Whisenhunt’s firing.
The defense, that seems to be Dick LeBeau’s job again as Mularkey in his third head-coaching gig has yet to change who runs the team’s defense. Uncanny, really, and maybe a bit concerning given that LeBeau is not exactly a spring chicken. I don’t have the foggiest who takes over if LeBeau should be unable to coach for any reason now that Ray Horton has left for Cleveland. Maybe linebackers coach Lou Spanos, who has past DC experience at UCLA. Not the happiest subject, I know, but one the Titans (and every other team) should know the answer to-for a look at what happens when a team doesn’t know the answer, see what happened in Tampa in 2014 when OC Jeff Tedford had to step away for health reasons on the eve of the season.
Digression, not specifically about team-building, but a point I want to note: the Titans were awfully happy to keep Mularkey and LeBeau around when the offense tanked after Marcus Mariota got hurt, just like it did under Whisenhunt, and the defense fell off a cliff when Derrick Morgan got hurt.
I’ll defray discussion of the coaching staff and my thoughts on it for a future post. Brief summary: Munchak 2013, which at least was not Munchak 2011.
On Comments on Specific Players
Marcus Mariota was the one player Robinson and Mularkey mentioned, and by and large the only player they mentioned. No surprise coming from Robinson, since he’s been elsewhere and wasn’t specifically familiar with other players, but Underwood solo at the end of the season and Mularkey’s nominally unknown fate meant we never got the traditional end-of-season wrap-up presser from him that we would from a head coach who coached Week 17 and looks to coach Week 1 the next season.
We did get a couple specific comments from Mularkey about Mariota. One of them was that since he didn’t call plays in the huddle in college, the verbiage in Ken Whisenhunt’s offense seemed to slow him down a bit and result in the Titans getting out of the line late. His shorter calls will be designed to help improve that tempo and let the offense get into more of a rhythm. Another thing he specifically noted was communication with the offensive line, especially in response to some of the complicated defenses they saw. Week 15 against New England stands out in this area, both with Mariota’s struggles and the in-game change at center, replacing Andy Gallik with Joe Looney.
The only other player Mularkey made real specific comments on was Dorial Green-Beckham. To preview the WR positional analysis, my take on him is along the lines of “He needs to learn how to play football.” Mularkey’s commentary was along similar lines, with excerpts for my notes (should be close, but not necessarily verbatim) including: “He’s got a long way to go … Not sure he knows right now how to actually be a pro … Weight was an issue all year.” That last was something Derrick Mason (one of the hosts for the interview) specifically asked about.
My Favorite Things I Heard
Underwood: Nothing really stands out, to be honest, but at least he didn’t try to pretend there was a real head coaching search.
Robinson: He’ll be teaching the scouts (the new scouts, at least, after the draft in March) how he wants them to scout. This seems like something really dumb and basic-you’d want your normally entry-level employees to have this basic training-but apparently only a handful of teams actually do it.
Mularkey: The tempo and communication points on Mariota. I’ll dive into Marcus in more detail in the positional analysis (and I’m sure again in other posts), but we’re still trying to figure out who he is and streamlining the noise like that will help us learn.
Questions Not Necessarily Asked and Not Answered
Ownership and a potential sale of the team: this post is long enough I’m not going to dive into detail on this, but let’s just say between Underwood comments in the presser and on his subsequent radio appearances and PFT’s later report, there is basically zero chance this issue will be going away any time soon.
Non-football character: between Taylor Lewan, Zach Mettenberger, and Dorial Green-Beckham, the Titans drafted their share of players in Ruston Webster’s recent season with some off the field baggage. Robinson did cite faith and family as things allowed to be more important than football, but for all we know he could be fine with random acts of violence being fourth on their list. Or not.
Draft board size: New England is famous for having a very small list of players on their draft board, reportedly around 50 most seasons. Webster spoke about having a draft board with as many players as there were picks in the draft, so five times as many. Where does Robinson want to be on this issue?
In the office or out of the office: You can be a successful GM spending all your time in the office and you can be a successful GM spending as little time in your office as possible (George Young vs. Charlie Casserly, to use the two examples Phil Savage used in his radio appearance, or Dave Gettleman vs. Ted Thompson, to use two current GMs as examples). Robinson’s background suggests he could be more of the latter type, though we will see.
Analytics in coaching: Robinson was asked the analytics question and cited a specific example from scouting and validating observations (broader note on “analytics”: the Titans played over 1,000 snaps on both of offense and defense, totaling over 23,000 player snaps. Translating that mess into actionable information requires a great deal of compression, which is by its nature lossy, and I’ll abandon this wormhole here). Mularkey wasn’t asked about it, at least to my knowledge.
What constitutes a successful 2016 season: Both Robinson and Mularkey unsurprisingly refused to put a number on it.
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