NASHVILLE, Tenn. – What the Titans want sounds like what the Titans had and yes, I’m going there.
Before Mike Borgonzi’s Tuesday press conference I’d thought a lot about the idea of the Titans needing an alpha back in the coach’s office and the idea that Amy Adams Strunk fearing that sort of personality.
I asked Borgonzi about the importance of having an alpha coach as the leader of men.
“I think that gets a little overrated sometimes,” he said. “I mean, leadership can come in a lot of different forms. There (are) leaders that are more quiet, but they're demanding. The biggest thing is being demanding.
“You don't always have to be heard, be a big alpha. It's just demanding things out of your players and staff, then having a vision and having standards in the organization. You certainly don't have to be a big alpha personality to do that.”
That’s a good answer, and finding that kind of leader would be ideal for him, because as I said, I don’t think his owner, her president and chief executive officer Burke Nihill and maybe even her president of football operations Chad Brinker do well with an alpha coach.
After all, the organization fired Mike Vrabel. Maybe the league's top alpha coach took a year off and then keyed a Patriots turnaround from 3-14 to 14-3 that has them the AFC’s second seed and a 3.5-point home favorite against the Chargers Sunday night.
Borgonzi, himself an alpha, is an innocent here. But he doesn’t just need to do much better than Brian Callahan with who he hires. The measure should be Vrabel, as the Titans had him and messed things up. The football had gotten bad. The roster had gotten bad.
Both sides wanted it to be done at the end.
The coach was not without sin, but the power people failed to see trouble ahead and do the work needed early to save things.
Borgonzi’s making this hire, but it’ll come with Brinker on the committee and Strunk’s blessing. Nihill looks to be uninvolved, which insiders will say was the case before, but he certainly trumpeted the arrivals of Ran Carthon and Callahan as if the Titans had really found something.
Strunk loves a sweet talker more than a straight talker.
Mike Mularkey didn’t get the job in 2016 based primarily on scheme or leadership characteristics. He got it because he fit the moment and the person in power.
Ultimately you have to sweet talk and straight talk working for an eccentric owner who’s not football savvy. Every coach smooches up to his owner, but some build real working relationships and friendships and some have to fake it.
It’s not the White House over at 460 Great Circle Road, but it’s an awfully political place. She’s always got a favorite. It’s typically the newest guy and that means Brinker and Borgonzi are both about to move down a peg for the coach.
It happens fast with so much turnover so quick.
So Borgonzi provided this job description.
“It's having a clear vision, having standards for what you do," he said. "And then, having that person not be afraid of conflict in a negative way, but being able to hold people accountable is the biggest thing, throughout the whole building. Staff, players, and how do you do that?
“And that person ultimately has to connect everybody in the building, too. So you have to have that balance there of being demanding, connecting people in the building and just bringing people together. So those are the big things that really we're looking for. Obviously, they have to have a strategic vision in terms of philosophy and X's and O's as well.”
Conflict and connection? He’s dead on to think there has to be both.
I’m afraid his boss is afraid of the first of the two big Cs.
She sure was when she had and fired a C of the Year.