This new Titans coaching staff gets it
For now, the Tennessee Titans’ world is pristine. New faces and philosophies and relationships. Nothing spoiled yet. No stains. No one disappointed or disgruntled.
Who doesn’t love a good honeymoon phase? Enjoy it while it lasts. Never does in the NFL.
But, meanwhile, as players returned this week for the start of the Titans’ offseason program, new coach Brian Callahan’s staff got to make some positive first impressions.
Like defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson, for example.
You can tell Wilson gets it.
“As a coaching staff and myself included,” said Wilson, channeling his inner Harbaugh, “we come out here and we try to have enthusiasm unknown to mankind to get these guys to come back and want to be coached and want to be around us. It’s been very receptive. Guys are buying in.”
By saying that, Wilson showed he understands the most important current goal for this new staff: To recruit their own players and keep them showing up in the building. This is the voluntary part of the NFL’s offseason. Players don’t have to be there, outside of a brief mandatory minicamp in June.
While it’s easy to judge millionaire football players for skipping out, if certain days were voluntary to show up at your job, knowing you’d still get paid if you didn’t show up, would you go? That’s what I thought. Problem for the Titans right now, along with other NFL teams that just made coaching changes, is the tranquil honeymoon phase comes at a competitive cost. They are far behind other franchises who have returning staffs and schemes already in place – a group that, until this year, included Mike Vrabel’s Titans.
Vrabel encouraged veteran players to attend the Titans’ offseason workouts, but if they didn’t, it wasn’t too big a deal. They already knew what to do and how coaches wanted it done.
Not so anymore.
“It’s a long process,” Callahan said Wednesday, “and every extra minute helps. We’re sort of in a little bit of a sprint between now and the start of the season with every other team in the league to do the best we can to catch up to the teams that are established and make sure that we’re ready to play in September.”
When I asked him, Callahan said all the right things about respecting players’ choices to not attend: “If someone misses a day or two or misses a week or misses four or five weeks, it doesn’t really matter to me at this point.”
But Callahan added, importantly, “I’ve been very pleased with the attendance so far in this first week.”
Thus far, it has been close to 100%, I’m told, meaning all but a handful of players have been there to meet the new staff and get started with them.
Good thing, too. Because this new staff is starting from scratch. First couple of days, time was spent going over how they want players to huddle.
I’m not kidding.
“There are more ways than you think,” said offensive coordinator Nick Holz, who revealed that the Titans will, in fact, huddle in a circle offensively. “There we go,” he said with a smile, “I can give that away.”
That might seem silly. But, see, Callahan gets it, too. The Titans made Wilson and Holz available to the media, one of many clear contrasts between Callahan and Vrabel, who wouldn’t do that with his assistant coaches this time of year.
In this case, I found it clever. Coaches can’t punish players for not attending these voluntary days. There’s no stick, but there can be a carrot. On Wednesday, three Titans coaches had a platform in which they could indirectly advocate to their new players why it’s important to continue to attend these sessions.
“When you’re here, it’s not just about the football,” Wilson said. “It’s not just about the scheme. It’s about connecting. It’s about creating a brotherhood. Because when you play as one and you gel as one and you trust the person next to do to go and do his job and execute, you play better.
“You don’t give up explosive plays. You don’t misfit your gaps, because you’re all on the same page. You think alike.”
Offensively, the Titans are in the process of “kind of installing everything,” Holz said, meaning they’d like to have a complete playbook in place to provide options once they get on the field and “find out what we’re good at” to shape preferences. Good luck to any player having to catch up on all that retroactively.
So much to do, these new Titans, and they’re just getting started.
But know this: “Whoever is here,” Wilson said, “we’re going to coach the hell out of them.”
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes. Click here and bookmark to follow all of his work.