Carthon says he, Vrabel never had issues working together
Tennessee Titans general manager Ran Carthon has no regrets about the way he handled his relationship with coach Mike Vrabel.
Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk fired Vrabel on Tuesday, ending his six-year stint with the franchise after a 6-11 season and months of reports, rumors and speculation about Carthon and Vrabel having a poor relationship. Speaking to the media Tuesday afternoon for the first time since the beginning of training camp, Carthon called those rumors untrue.
“I want to say that Mike and I never had any issue, whether it’s personal or professional,” Carthon said. “We worked well together and had a good relationship. We were in lockstep. I want to finally come out and dispel that.”
The Titans hired Carthon as general manager in January 2023. In his introductory news conference, he said building a relationship with Vrabel was at the “top of (his) to-do list” and expressed the goal of collaborating to build the team.
But shortly after firing Vrabel, Adams Strunk cited the lack of collaboration as the primary reason for Vrabel’s ousting. A source close to the situation told The Tennessean that Adams Strunk wants the Titans to build a team using a model more consistent with some of the best and most collaborative teams in the NFL, such as the San Francisco 49ers, Detroit Lions and Philadelphia Eagles.
Carthon said he didn’t see a problem with the way he and Vrabel divided responsibilities, their collaboration or the fact that neither party had “final say” over decisions made relating to the 53-man roster.
“We worked well together. We got along,” Carthon said. “I feel like our collaboration was fine. In that given time when I said I wanted to serve Mike and serve his coaching staff, that’s going to be the philosophy moving forward. No matter who our next head coach is and who our coaching staff is, our job in personnel is to serve them and to provide them with players that they want to coach and that fit their scheme. I think that’s the nature of the position.”
Carthon said he doesn’t intend to do anything differently when it comes to building a relationship with Vrabel’s replacement. He considers relationship-building to be one of his strengths. He also said he doesn’t shy from having difficult conversations with people and will always make himself available to Vrabel’s replacement, as he did with Vrabel.
According to Carthon, he and Vrabel made every decision together in 2023. They had meetings every morning. No player ever made it on to the 53-man roster, Carthon says, who the coaches didn’t want.
Nevertheless, the Titans struggled through the season. In a video posted on the Titans’ social media channels, Adams Strunk said she intends to publicly announce who will have final say on the 53-man roster when a new coach is announced, a seeming contradiction of Carthon’s insistence that wanting final say is purely ego-driven and that collaborative decision-making is the best way to win.
That said, Carthon told reporters that even if he gets to make the decisions, he doesn’t intend to make them without his coaches’ wants in mind.
“It’s whatever’s best for this organization, we’re going to do that,” he said. “If she says that I have final say, it’ll be a collaborative effort with the head coach. I firmly believe and I’ll never deviate from it: We’re not going to bring players in here that the coaches don’t want to coach.”
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com . Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.