Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Vrabel Presser; OC Choices

Episode Date: January 23, 2018

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked on Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you tonight? Doing great. What's going on? Not a whole lot. We got the Mike Vrabel introductory press conference today, so we'll talk a little bit about that. And then some offensive coordinator news and notes type things. So before we do that, subscribe to the podcast, Locked on Titans, wherever you get podcasts. we do that. Subscribe to the podcast Locked on Titans wherever you get podcasts. iTunes, Stitcher, wherever you

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musiccityofmiracles.com, covering the Titans for SB Nation. Check that out as well. We've had a bunch of stories today with a bunch of stuff. Obviously, they came out throughout the day. The big thing was the Mike Vrabel press conference. So the Titans officially introduced him to the media here and to the fans. So, Terry, I'll kind of let you kick it off with your initial thoughts of Mike Vrabel in that press conference. It was kind of refreshing.

He was just unpolished. He was joyful. You could tell he was so happy and excited about getting the job. He was funny, something we didn't really get too much with Mike Malarkey. So just from that standpoint, it was fun to listen to him lay out his vision for the team. I thought he said all the right things. He was cracking jokes with the media about how he was going to be the co-offensive and co-defensive and co-special teams coordinators.

If he wanted to call a deep shot, he was going to do it because he was the head coach. It wasn't an arrogant type thing. So it wasn't an arrogant type thing. I just thought it was cool to see him so happy, so excited for the opportunity that he was given. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, it was refreshing. It was a bit of a different thing than what we've seen in the past. And, you know, it was the introductory press conference.

Everybody's high. Everybody's excited. So, you know, you kind of take that stuff with a grain of salt. But, yeah, I did like how he answered that question. It was basically like, I may not call every play, but if there's something that I want to do, I get to decide that I want to do it because I'm the head coach. And that will be a new thing for him, a role that he's never been in before.

So pretty cool to hear him talk about that. My favorite line, we were talking about this before we jumped on, of the press conference was when he said, he was asked kind of about offensive scheme, offensive philosophy, and he said, well, I'll tell you this, we're not going to run into eight or nine in the box. We're not going to be silly. So that kind of felt like a little bit of a shot at the previous regime,

which, you know, is kind of to be expected a little bit. It was interesting hearing him talk about the way that they prepped for Marcus Mariota. You know, obviously, Vrabel was the defensive coordinator with the Texans last year, so he had, you know, two opportunities to get ready for a Titans offense. Mariota played in both those games. He got hurt in that first Texans game, but after he had the touchdown run. And, you know, Vrab run. And, you know, Variable basically said, you know, they were scared to death of what Mariota could do with his legs,

what he can do throwing. Anyway, like, when you listen to him talk about his offensive philosophy, I thought it was neat, because he talked about, you know, basically that he talked about the college football being kind of the farm system for the NFL,

and there's so much spread being played there. So it makes sense for NFL teams to adopt more spread. So it sounded adaptive in that way, and that's good considering that's so much different than what we had before. And it may seem like a simple thing to say we're going to do what our team does best. And it may seem like a simple thing to say we're going to do what our team does best, but we had a group here before that didn't do that, so that's why it's gotten us so excited about hearing things like that. But he also said, and I thought this was a good point,

that they weren't going to recklessly or needlessly run Marcus Mariota. Basically, they're going to protect him. You're going to see some of the spread concept type stuff, but at the same time, it doesn't sound like they're going to be, you know, having him run a lot of option and stuff like that. Run when he needs to, some design runs, obviously scrambling and that kind of stuff. But still with the mindset of we need to protect our quarterback. And, you know, that was something I've been seeing the last couple days on Twitter. People are like, oh, you've got an injury-prone quarterback,

and now you're going to bring in somebody that's just going to let him run around. He's going to get hurt even more. And so hopefully Vrabel put those fears at ease. Now, I think those fears were irrational, and sometimes it's hard to communicate with irrational people. But, I mean, I liked what he had to say about what he wants this team to do on offense. And when you talk about spread, people have no idea what spread means. I've learned that in the past two days.

They have no clue. So apparently the spread is running the Tim Tebow offense where the quarterback is going to get 30 carries a game. That's not it. It's a scheme. It's a concept. It's spreading out the field. It's opening up running lanes.

You're still going to run the football out of the spread uh you saw derrick henry run the football out of the spread against kansas city and you saw him have so much success there are there quarterback runs yeah if if you want they're there you can throw in some read option stuff but it's just spreading out the field thinning out the defense uh taking the front seven off the field. So it sounded to me like that's something he definitely wanted to incorporate. We'll talk a little bit more about this later, but it sounded like he had an offensive coordinator, at least offered one in Ryan Day, and we were excited about it, but that's not going to happen anymore.

But we'll talk about that in a minute. On the defensive side of the ball, he didn't really commit to a 3-4 or a 4-3. And to be clear, no coach does. They say we're going to play to the strengths of our defense, and they're not going to give you anything. He said coverage, consistency, and front multiplicity when he was asked about 3-4 or 4-3. So Houston ran a 3-4, but I had to think about it.

We were talking when the hire happened, does Houston run a 3-4 or 4-3? And I said, you know, I really don't know because they're so multiple. They give you a bunch of different looks. So usually I'd throw a comment like that out, but I think he's telling the truth there. I think they're going to be very multiple. They're going to put Jarrell Casey in spots where he can win. They're going to put Brian Arakpo in spots where he can win.

So maybe they'll draft a pass rusher and add to that mix. But it's refreshing to hear him say that. Like you said, the old staff didn't put players in positions to win, and that's just crazy. the old staff didn't put players in positions to win, and that's just crazy. Yeah, and again, I think we probably sound a little bit silly. If you're not a Titans fan and you listen to us talk, you're like, oh my goodness, they're that excited about a guy that says that they're going to put his player,

he's going to put his players in the best position to win. But yes, because of Mike Malarkey and basically the system of we're going to do what we're going to do regardless of what's lined up opposite i mean again i just go back to that cleveland browns game where they were terrible uh against the pass right and really good against the run and even and jason mccourty to that point had been like a shut down corner for the first however many weeks of the season before the titans played them jason mccourty, to that point, had been like a shutdown corner for the first however many weeks of the season before the Titans played them. Jason McCourty missed that game, and the Titans still lined up and ran it the same amount of times that they would have against the best pass defense in the league, like against the Jaguars, for instance.

So, yeah, we are really excited about a guy that talks about building around the players that he has because we haven't seen that here. You know, it was interesting, too. Dick LeBeau, basically, I think he told Kaharski at one point, you know, adapt or die. Like, that was what he said about coaching in the NFL. And it's just so funny to hear him say that. And then, you know, Rubisky was kind of the exact opposite of that.

Like, we're going to do what we want to do, regardless of what the other team does. So, again, that's kind of where we're coming from here on all of this and so you know again i feel like they won the press conference today um i'm not sure how important i mean obviously that doesn't mean anything in next september when it comes to you know playing games on the field but i i feel like if you that there were a lot of us that were on the fence about this hire, and we kind of talked about that when we recorded Saturday night. Vrabel was obviously a hot candidate in this cycle, and we talked about even before Malarkey got fired, they parted ways, whatever, that we weren't really thrilled about this group of candidates in this cycle. There wasn't anybody that jumped off the page at you that you were like you know we got to go get that guy um but you know in nfl circles variable was obviously a hot name

and so you know obviously he came in and he wowed john robinson amy adam strunk and was able to convince them of you know the the system that he was going to bring and all that kind of stuff so a good job today uh very personable um like you said, funny, and just relatable. So, I mean, I think that's exciting. And, you know, we'll see where it goes from here. Obviously now we'll turn our attention to the coordinators, the staff, all that kind of stuff. And when he was asked about that today, he didn't really put a timeline on, you know, when he wanted all that stuff done. But, obviously, I would think the sooner the better would be what he's thinking there.

And then a lot of these conversations, as we talked about on Saturday as well, will take place at the Senior Bowl. That's when you've got coaches, agents, you know, all those people kind of together in one small area for a period of time. So I would expect to see some moves being made there this week um so anyway so we'll keep an eye on that obviously as we go uh so as far as that's concerned we had a few i guess news items today with the with the with the current staff uh koharski reported earlier this morning that Dick LeBeau will not be retained.

And we talked about that a little bit Saturday, about how we wouldn't necessarily be surprised either way if LeBeau stayed or if he was out. But with a guy like Vrabel being a defensive guy, you would think that he would have an idea of a system that he wanted to run and that kind of stuff. And so ultimately he would probably bring in his own guy. Yeah, not surprising.

And you saw Terry Hrabisky let go and a couple other assistants. So you'll see more of that. The receivers coach, Frisman, I forget his name, took a job with Baylor. I don't expect anybody from the staff to be back. There's just not a lot there, especially with both coordinators already out the door. You're probably not going to keep his assistants around. So, I don't know.

The office of coordinator still is the big deal here. I guess we can get into Ryan Day now. We thought the Titans had Ryan Day in their hands, but apparently he has turned them down. Adam Schefter reported that the Titans had made an offer, or at least that's the way his tweet read, to Ryan Day, who was the co-officer coordinator at Ohio State, and he apparently turned the Titans down. So he was a guy that we had talked ourselves into

because he was a spread guy, but the more you dug into him he was kind of adaptable uh he ran the power offense with boston college he got uh andre williams over 2 000 yards at boston college uh next year he comes back and he runs power quarterback power with tyler murphy uh just seemed like a really adaptable, bright guy. Went to New Hampshire. He was a Chip Kelly disciple. So he was easy to get excited about. But apparently he's wanting to stay more in the college realm of things, which is okay. But now it begs the question, who's up next? So you've got John DeFilippo, who didn't get the Arizona job. You've got Matt LaFleur.

I just don't know how much stock to put into him with this job. And then you've got guys like Callahan. You've got Jim Bob Cooter out there. You've got Morton, the Jets' offensive coordinator. So a lot of names, but, again, it's hard to connect anybody with Vrabel just because he hasn't been coaching for very long. There's just not a lot of ties with him. Yeah, and I think, didn't I see something earlier today?

There was some kind of announcement that Matt LaFleur was going to stay in Los Angeles. I thought I saw that earlier today. There was. I missed it. Yeah, it looks like something from USA Today. Likely, he's likely to stay with Los Angeles. I'm still not really buying that one. Again, I just don't know how you interview a guy for head coach and then turn around and make him the offensive coordinator. So I think more than likely he stays with the Rams and with Sean McVay there.

We talked a little bit about why he might be attracted to a job like this, where he could call plays where he doesn't in Los Angeles. But I would be surprised if he's the guy that ends up here. Yeah. And with Ryan Day, I mean, I guess, like you said, you know, you said he had generated some interest with college jobs this past cycle, and you're obviously a lot more plugged into that with your work at Rocky Top Talk and that kind of stuff than I am.

So, I mean, if he wants to be a college guy, like you said, there's nothing wrong with that, and that may be what he envisions his career being, and that's fine. But now you're kind of back to square one, and for whatever reason, DiFilippo has been tied to Steve Wilks, who is apparently getting the Arizona Cardinals job. That's a guy that I would hope the Titans would go after, just glowing reviews on him from a lot of different people, and you watch YouTube videos on him and all that stuff,

but it sounds like he's kind of tied to Steve Steve Wilk so maybe he ends up taking that job I don't know if the Titans will try to hold out and talk to him or not you know now you have to wait until after the Super Bowl uh because I guess apparently the rule is if if a guy interviewed during when his team had a buy during wild card weekend they can go for a second interview in the bye week before the super bowl but they can't take a first interview until after the super bowl so um you know so we'll kind of see how all that plays out there is a name that has surfaced tonight and we'll talk a little bit about that after this okay so brian callahan is a guy that has been the quarterbacks coach with the lions for the last couple of years under jim bob cooter the offensive coordinator there obviously jim caldwell was the head coach he was let go earlier uh in january now i guess there has been no there

there's been no official announcement about who's going to be the lions head coach but matt patricia is the guy that's reported to get the job. Now, obviously, he can't take that job until the Patriots are done, so you've got two more weeks there where they're playing in the Super Bowl. So the future of Jim Bob Cooter is kind of up in the air. I don't know. Maybe Patricia will keep him. I have no idea what's going to happen there.

But Brian Callahan is a guy that apparently has some ties to Mike Vrabel, at least a guy that, like Karski reported earlier tonight, that he's a guy that has been tied to Vrabel. Other teams, I don't know what teams, had asked to interview Callahan earlier in this cycle for an offensive coordinator, and the Lions had blocked that. But then tonight, Monday night, they apparently have decided to part ways with him. So he's a name that has surfaced that couldn't be the guy.

Terry and I were talking before we came on. He's a guy that's, like, impossible to find anything out about. Like, if you Google him, you Google anybody, right? And their name comes up in the Wikipedia page. All these coaches we've been talking about. You can find their Wikipedia page. you can get their coaching history real quick well brian callahan apparently doesn't have doesn't have one i'm not sure what's going on there but he's the son of bill callahan who is currently the offensive coordinator with the reds or i mean i'm

sorry the offensive line coach with the redskins was the raiders head coach back in the day after after john gruden, he followed. He was John Gruden's offensive coordinator with the Raiders, and he was the head coach once Gruden went to the Buccaneers, was the coach of that Raiders team that went to the Super Bowl. Brian Callahan, his son, has been with Denver for like six years and then spent two years with the Lions as the quarterback's coach. That's basically all we can find about him tonight. Yeah, I don't have a lot to add.

I mean, he was quarterback's coach for Peyton Manning. So that doesn't tell me much. Like you said, you could go be Peyton Manning's quarterback's coach. So Matthew Stafford is already Matthew Stafford before he gets there, so I'm not sure what kind of credit he deserves there. That's the thing. He might be great. We just don't know.

We're not plugged in. We don't know anything about him. We don't know anything about him behind closed doors. It's interesting that Jim Bob Cooter is likely to hit the market, and he's not getting more traction for this but callahan is so i i don't know i don't have a lot to add here yeah it seems like if you were gonna have a chance to hire somebody off that staff and jim bob cooter was available that that would be the guy you would go after right i mean he's done he's done a really good job there. But I guess at this point there's a chance he's going to stay.

Like you said before we started, it's just interesting timing that all of a sudden Callahan has become available. So I don't know what that means. And maybe he is the guy that gets in the mix. Bill Callahan is an offensive guy. He's obviously tied to the Grudens because he was like I said, John Gruden's offensive coordinator in Oakland. He now works for John's brother Jay in Washington.

So, I don't know. It's just weird that with today's internet, it's so hard to find out stuff about this guy. But that's a name that surfaced. And then we'll see if anything else happens. Again, my preference would be that they

hold out to talk to de filippo but if he is i mean it may be it's well known that he's tied to wilks and he's going to arizona i don't know but you would like to see that him at least have a conversation with him because he's obviously done some great work uh Carson Wentz, with Nick Foles, you know, even in Philadelphia. So I haven't really seen the other names as far as that have been tied to that have been tied to Vrabel at this point. And I don't know where the connection with Calhoun is, but there's apparently one because, like I said, Karski had said something about it even a week or so back. But at that point, it was assumed that he wouldn't be a possibility because the Lions had already blocked Callahan from interviewing him in other places. So anyway, something to keep an eye on.

The other thing of note, there was a name that surfaced today as far as a potential defensive coordinator candidate. And, you know, you wrote this up on music miracles.com and i don't darren petty is the name uh he's been the secondary coach with the packers but you know the pack you know if you play tfs like we do uh you know you're you're picking on the the packers you know you're you're picking wide receiver against the packers every single week so that that's a name that that I can't really get excited about. No, it's kind of weird because Perry doesn't have a job right now. He was the safeties coach at Green Bay,

and they listed him as the secondary and safeties coach, but they also employed a separate cornerbacks coach. So like you were saying, the Green Bay secondary has been terrible. We know that by playing fantasy football. So he's a Dick LeBeau disciple. He coached under Dick LeBeau when he was the head coach in Cincinnati back in the early 2000s. Like I said, he doesn't have a job because the Packers hired a new

safeties coach today from Bowling Green. He's unemployed and looking for work. This comes from Kuharski who floated his name. He said maybe for D.C. That doesn't sound very confident to me. Maybe Paul is taking a stab in the dark there.

If anything, maybe a secondary coach, maybe a safeties coach. Something like that. I just can't see him losing his job and falling upward into a defensive coordinator job. Yeah, like I said, I would hope not. But it's just been all the quiet as far as defensive coaches have been concerned. And obviously the more of the focus on from the fans perspective, at least is who's going to run the offense. And again, I don't know. I'm interested to see, cause we just kind of assumed it was going to be Ryan day,

right? With the report that, you know, that they had offered him the job. We just thought that he would take it. We talked about how, you know, for variable to get this job, he had to it. We talked about how, you know, if we were able to get this job, he had to pitch the Titans, John Robinson, Amy Adams-Strunk, on who he was going to bring in to coach Marcus Mariota. What's his plan B after Ryan Day? Did he give them a plan B, you know, in that meeting? Did he have an idea that Ryan Day might take the job?

I don't have any idea what this is, but, you know, we'll kind of keep an eye there. It doesn't seem like it's often necessarily a great start. If that was the guy that he came in and sold them on, and now he's decided to stay where he is. But like I said, it's all speculation at this point. We'll keep an eye on that. I think we can pretty much close the book on Ryan Day. Adam Schefter is generally right when he comes out with something.

So it seems like they will have to go in another direction. The Brian Callahan thing, again, is speculation at this point. We haven't really seen any concrete reports that he's a guy that will be considered here other than Karski said he had heard that that was a guy that Vrabel could bring in. But again, now that he doesn't have a job, he could bring him in as a quarterback's coach. We don't know what the deal will be there. But that will be something that we'll obviously be monitoring as we go on here.

That's what it's down to now at this point, is the staff, who they're going to bring in. And so obviously we'll try to stay on top of that and get the reports out there as they come. But it's kind of been weirdly quiet as far as all that stuff's concerned.

And again, Braybill said today basically he's going to take his time, find the right guys, and that's what we want him to do, to assemble the best staff that he can. And we have some ideas on guys, and maybe not even names that we would like to see, but just the philosophy that we want the new coaching staff to have, just with the flexibility and the adaptability and all that stuff like we've talked about. So hopefully that's what we'll see. And, again, we'll just kind of try to stay on top of these names as they come out.

Just kind of keep in mind Ryan Day came out of nowhere. There was nobody linking him, obviously, to Vrabel. And they did not coach at Ohio State during the same time period. So there's no linkage there. So, you know, we've thrown out a bunch of these names. But don't think that the Titans are going to be limited to those guys. I mean, you might see him hit up another college coach. There's plenty of young, bright coordinators in the college ranks

that have run spread, that are adaptive, and would love the opportunity to make a jump to the NFL. So I don't know, sit tight. I'm not panicking just because they swung and apparently missed on their first hire. So interested to see what direction they go for sure, but also interested to see if they have any interest in DeFilippo, who is the hot name for just about every team

with an offensive coordinator opening right now. Yeah, and this is a job that's attractive, right? I mean, you've got – there's a lot of talent on this offense. So it's not like he's going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel for guys. Like I said, it seems like Ryan Day wants to be a college guy that's fine um but i don't think that that means he's going to have to go to choice you know 64 and just get the the first guy that'll say yes there there is a lot to like about this this titans offense and obviously marcus mariota being the headliner there. So, like you said, there's no reason to panic at this point and we'll just

kind of watch and see how this plays out. And, you know, if it's Brian Callahan, whatever. I mean, we don't know that much about him. We'll learn as much as we can in the coming days, but he's a guy that at least, you know, I mean, Albert Breer is pretty plugged in and he said

I'll have a market. So, anyway, we'll keep an eye on that, and we'll keep you updated as we go. Anything else we need to hit tonight? I probably should mention Kevin Byard, Brendan Trawick were named to the Pro Bowl tonight. So, as alternates, but Byard does get his Pro Bowl after all. Yeah, and again, we talked back when that stuff was announced. It was ridiculous that he wasn't you know voted a starter from the beginning uh great to look at that opportunity that's cool and he was named all pro too so i mean obviously a great season for him and just another one of the

the titans have a lot of young talent on this team um and so just another example of that and treywick a guy that you know they they brought in this offseason and obviously played well on special teams and that was obviously a focus of John Robinson's last year was shoring up that if they were so bad in 2016 so good to see that and I mean I'm not big on the Pro Bowl but it's good

that there'll be Titans players there that's always a cool honor for those guys so yeah that's definitely a point that's worth mentioning. All right, so that will wrap it up for tonight. Like I said, check out musicseamiracles.com. We'll have plenty more about all of this, about the staff and how that's going to be tied together. So we'll stay on top of that.

And as names come out, we'll try to get posts up there and kind of give you what we know about the guys and our thoughts as to how they might fit here. So stay tuned there. Again, subscribe to the podcast, Locked on Titans, iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. So check us out there. That obviously helps us, and we'll be here bringing you content all the way through the draft, through the offseason, and into next year. So thanks for listening, and we'll be back tomorrow with another episode. We will talk to you then.

For Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.