What Patriots Can Learn After Titans Make Seismic Personnel Move

Mike Vrabel was right.

At least that’s how it looks after the Tennessee Titans announced Tuesday they fired general manager Ran Carthon.

According to previous reports, Vrabel cautioned Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk that Carthon was not ready to be general manager but Strunk hired Carthon anyway in 2023. The Titans forced the marriage of Carthon and Vrabel that campaign, a 6-11 season which marked Vrabel’s last in Nashville. Strunk then chose Carthon over Vrabel and fired the latter two years after he won Coach of the Year.

Here’s a refresh of how Titans ownership has handled the last few years:

It should serve as a guiding light for an organization like the New England Patriots, and not only because Vrabel is viewed as the front-runner for their head coaching job.

The Patriots fired Bill Belichick following the 2023 campaign and appointed Eliot Wolf to oversee personnel and Jerod Mayo to lead the coaching staff. New England on Sunday fired Mayo after one tumultuous season in which on-field regression and poor communication were obvious.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft will hire his third head coach in three seasons, but intends for Wolf’s personnel staff to remain in place. As it stands, it seems as if the Patriots could be lining up a forced marriage between Wolf and the incoming head coach.

That rarely works, as evidence by Tennessee’s stretch of failure.

A known coaching commodity like Vrabel surely will want to partner with someone he knows and trusts, right? Perhaps it could even make the Patriots less attractive to Vrabel or another coaching candidate.

There might be a way to make all things work: New coach, new coach-executive tandem and keep Wolf. It would likely require the Patriots to bring in an executive over the top of Wolf, the executive vice president of player personnel. Maybe the new coach brings in his own guy for a more traditional general manager role, as discussed during NESN’s “Boston Has Entered The Chat.” The other option, though, would be to send Wolf packing like Mayo.

New England doesn’t have to look hard to find situations where forced partnerships haven’t worked. Maybe they’ll even have those conversations with Vrabel himself during their head coaching interview this week.