Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Dean Pees hired as defensive coordinator

Episode Date: January 30, 2018

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked on Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you tonight? Doing well. What's going on? Not too much. So we were all set to take the night off, and then Twitter kind of went crazy with the news that the Titans have hired a defensive coordinator, Dean Pease, who was formerly with the Baltimore Ravens. who was formerly with the Baltimore Ravens, also was with the Patriots a few years back when Vrabel played for the Patriots. So some natural ties there. This was a name that first surfaced over the weekend that it could be a possibility.

Pease is 68 years old and, again, had retired at the end of the season. So I'm assuming that his contract was up with the Ravens at that point. He had decided he wanted to move on. Vrabel gets this job. They're familiar with each other. He calls him up and says, yeah, you know, we'll go again. So, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I think this is a really fantastic hire for the Titans for Mike Vrabel.

Mike Vrabel is a guy who's only been coaching for six or seven years, so there's a lack of experience. In peace, he's getting a guy that's been in coaching since 1979, has worked for Nick Saban in college at Toledo and at Michigan State, and then obviously coached under Belichick with the Patriots. So you're getting a guy that has a lot of experience, has a couple of Super Bowl rings, and I think will just be a valuable guy for variable to have on his staff to bounce things off of and i just i don't know

to me this this is like a really really good hire for him yeah i'm with that uh obviously you know what the baltimore defenses did uh over the years up there And like I said yesterday, he was kind of the guy that was tasked with transforming that Ed Reed era into this new era, and they did it pretty well. Obviously, they're not Super Bowl level like they were a few years back, but still, that's a really good unit up there, and it's a unit that's carried that football team for years now. So it's a little interesting that he would let Dick LeBeau walk for Dean Bees, but you just said the connection there.

You know, he coached Vrabel. So there's that obvious connection there. There's that comfort level there. So, yeah, he's a guy that's going to help Vrabel along as he transitions to his first head coaching job in the NFL. Yeah, absolutely. Titans could have done a lot worse

here. And I guess that we talked at the beginning about him whether or not he would hire a bunch of his boys and all that stuff. I guess on one hand, Pease could qualify as that, you know, because they do have familiarity with each other.

But at the same time, I mean, when you look at the landscape and you look at who's available, you don't have very many guys that are going to have a resume that we're going to know anything about. Anybody else that he would have hired, he would have pulled from, you know, somebody that he worked with before that had been like a linebackers coach or, you know, a position coach. It would have been making the step up to defensive coordinator. And so I think if you're going to have a staff that you've got a first-time

head coach, we still don't have any idea timing-wise or anything who the offensive coordinator is going to be. But at some point, we assume they're going to hire an offensive coordinator. We don't know if it'll be a guy that's been a coordinator or not before. But, you know, I don't know how great I would feel about a staff that came in with a first-time head coach, a first-time defensive coordinator, and a first-time offensive coordinator. Again, we don't know who the offensive coordinator is going to be at this point. first time office coordinator again we don't know uh who the office coordinator is going to be going to be at this point but i don't know there's just there's a level of comfort here with having a guy

who's done it before and um you know who again brings a lot of experience to the table when you when you've got a head coach that doesn't have that so you know and again i just i think that there are a lot of worse ways that this could have gone, and this, to me, brings a little bit of stability to a place where I think people are really starting to panic a little bit. The fact that we didn't have any names yet and all that stuff. So it's good that we have a name now. We've got some solid history on this guy that we can kind of dig into. It's funny. We were talking about this before we came on you know this story was originally broken by a high school twitter account because dean peas's

son is his name mike i can't remember what his name is but anyway uh peas's son was what his coach was coaching at a high school and the athletic director of that high school sent a letter to i don't know his team or i mean i don't know who the letter was addressed to but they put a copy of it on twitter um saying that the sun had accepted a job with with the titans um and so that's kind of where this all stemmed from and they did some digging and you know our boy can't confirm wolf on twitter uh you know was the first one to say that he had a leak source that was telling him it was true. And then it kind of snowballed from there. And then you got confirmation from Cameron Wolfe, the ESPN guy, on the Titans beat. And then you've got some other national guys that have confirmed it as well at this point.

So it seems to be real. But it's just funny that that's where we're at as far as the Titans beat goes, that we're scouring high school twitter accounts to get our news green mountain high school in colorado breaking titans news how about that um so yeah they they brought to the story that matt would be joining son uh dean's son matt will be joining him as an assistant on the defensive side of the ball. So my question here is Dean Pease retired on New Year's Day. He had been talking about doing that for a couple of years. What lured him out? Was it just simply helping Vrabel out?

Was it the opportunity to go work with his son? Did something go wrong in Baltimore? That part is interesting to me. Just having a guy that had been rumored to be wanting out for a couple years now, and then all of a sudden he's back in after taking a month off. So I don't know. The whole way this played out is kind of strange to me. So it feels like it's kind of a combination of those two

just wanting to help an old friend out and vrabel and the opportunity to work with his son was probably just too much for him to pass up yeah so you know whatever whatever it was that brought him here um again i i'm thrilled with it i mean i just think that there's something to be said for having some experience here and now they have that and a guy with a proven track record. Runs a 3-4. That's what they ran in Baltimore. So, you know, that kind of lines up with, obviously, what Vrabel is familiar with and what the Titans, you know, have been building their personnel towards for the last few years.

Now, we talked about how it may not have been that tough for them to make a personnel switch to go to a 4-3. But, you know, obviously I think they're more well-suited at this point to run a 3-4. So you have some continuity there. So that's a good thing. All right, so that's the news as far as the defensive coordinator is concerned. Coming up, we'll talk a little bit about the hottest Titans rumors and news of the day, the uniform changes. little bit about the hottest titans rumors and news of the day the uniform changes all right so earlier today uh on reddit or you know wherever that these things tend to come from uh there was there's some guy who allegedly lives in eugene oregon and has some familiarity

with the nike uh facility or factory or whatever it is and he is out here talking about the titans uniform getting like a complete makeover and um he posted something on there about the new he said new color scheme new logo new helmets um and that the new color scheme that red was going to be the predominant color that it was going to be red silver and the col scheme that red was going to be the predominant color that it was going to be red silver and the columbia blue was going to kind of take a back seat to you know as far as what it's been before you know again this is the thing that everybody's talking about right now even more so than a coaching staff which is funny to me um but it is you know obviously the titans have had the same uniforms basically since they came here

in 99 now they they've switched up the you know they switched the primary color on the on the jerseys at one point but you know we we know that they are going the uniforms are getting some type of a makeover uh amy adam strunk said that at training camp this past season that you know the 2017 would be the last season with those and they get a change um you know she said that it wouldn't be that big of a deal um but then she said that it would be different i'm not really sure how to read into that it was paul karski has that story and again museummiracles.com you can go check that out i wrote a post linking back to that karski story uh from back in august but it's just funny

to me how crazy all this stuff goes and how it blows up um you know again cars he said earlier i guess last week that the titans are planning on having some type of uniform reveal uh at some point in the spring it'll be a big deal and we'll see it uh john robinson titan's gm was on the midday 180, and they asked him about the uniform. It was, again, you know. But he said that he may or may not have seen them, and they may or may not be awesome.

So that's all that we have right now. But, you know, they just spent a lot of money. We're doing the locker room at the stadium at St. Thomas Sports Park, and they plastered that logo, the Titans logo, the flaming thumb tag as some people call it, all over everything. So I have trouble believing that they're going to completely abandon that, the fact that they just did that a couple years ago. But, I mean, I guess we don't really know at this point. Yeah, I don't think they're going to do that.

And Amy said it's not a total color change she told that to kuharski um back before camp i believe um so i have a hard time believing what this guy's saying um maybe he saw like the color rush uniform or something like that uh we've seen the red in the past yeah if you've been a Titans fan from the start, you remember those red alternate unis that disappeared. Those just happen to be my favorite. I love those. I know a lot of people didn't.

But I'll be interested to see if they kind of revive those in a different way. But I can't see them getting off of blue. I mean, look at the stadium. You've got blue, predominantly blue in the seating. Like you said, the locker room, they're not going to change the logo, I don't think. So I think we're going to see a different helmet, a different jersey for sure,

but I don't think it's going to be too wild like this guy's saying. Yeah, so again, it's what everybody's talking about right now and i think maybe just the fact that they haven't really done anything since they first came here uh has everybody excited to see something different you know i think it was dan patrick one time that said the titans had the ugliest uniforms in the nfl uh they did i don't know if they did a poll or something but i mean that's just funny to me that i mean the browns uniforms to me are obviously the worst in the league um those those colors are just awful but like the titans i mean i don't think they have necessarily the best uniforms in the league but i wouldn't think they were the worst either but you know everything gets updated

and different teams have changed things from time to time but you haven't seen really anybody make a huge color switch um so i again i just I have trouble believing that that's what we're going to see here. And, you know, we've seen 8 million people posting stuff on social media. This is what it's going to look like. This is what it should look like and all that stuff. And my guess is at the end of the day, it's a whole lot less drastic than what those people have been putting out there. Well, I mean, the clues are out there. less drastic than what those people have been putting out there.

Well, I mean, the clues are out there. If you look at any graphic the Titans post on Twitter or Facebook, you can see the font that they're using. You can go to their website, titansonline.com, and kind of see the font that I'm talking about. So I'd guess they moved to something like that. Maybe they're going to – yeah, I've seen some mock-ups of some more Greek-looking stuff, and I really like those. But I think you can see the number font right now on the website,

and they'll use the same font for Titans and the names on the back. So you can draw some conclusions there. I think that's pretty solid. But they're not going red. Surely not. Yeah, I don't see that either. there i i think that's pretty solid but they're they're they're not going red surely not yeah i just i don't i don't see that either so um but anyway we'll obviously keep an eye on that and if any you know anything uh any more hot rumors come out we'll uh we'll cover those here because that's that's what we're here to do but anyway uh so yeah we want to jump on tonight and get an

update on the the defensive coordinator thing and so obviously the staff is starting to fill out at this point. Whenever we do get an offensive coordinator hire, we'll obviously record a podcast then with reaction to that. But for now, what we know is that Dean Pease will be the defensive coordinator for the Titans next year. His son will be on the staff in some capacity. And then you've already got some of the names that we talked about last night. If you missed that, you can go back and listen to last night's podcast.

But we know Kerry Coombs will be coaching the defensive backs. And I think we have what Shane Bowen was the guy that was with the Texans before that will be coaching outside linebackers. So that staff is starting to fill out. It will be interesting to see if they pull anybody from the Ravens or how that all plays out. fill out um be interesting to see if if we get do they pull anybody from the ravens or you know how how that all plays out um but then once we know an obvious coordinator whenever that is then we'll probably see that staff you know fill out the rest of the way and so we'll have a an idea of what

it's going to look like next year so that's kind of we're getting close at this point so that's exciting and like i said we'll we'll have all the news as soon as it breaks, so keep checking musicandmiracles.com. We'll have that updated and you can see that there. Terry, anything else tonight we need to cover? No, hopefully this will just kind of ease everybody back down to earth. It seemed

like we were going off the deep end last week when the Titans struck out twice, so hopefully this will just kind of chill everybody out. You get a nice veteran presence, and you've got some youth under him. So maybe you've got your predecessor underneath him already at linebackers coach. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think Titans fans should be anything but excited about Dean Pease.

Yeah, absolutely. So, like I said, they could do a lot worse than that. All right, so, like I said, check out sitemuseumiracles.com. Follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry is at tlambertfb. Subscribe to the podcast, Locked on Titans, on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts.

And like I said, just stay tuned. When we get an office coordinator, we'll do another show, whenever that is. And then at that point, assuming it's in the next couple of days, we will preview the Super Bowl at that point too and kind of give some of our thoughts on that. But for Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans, and we will talk to you tomorrow.