Meetings with team ownership and general manager Ran Carthon are scheduled this week to determine the fate of head coach Mike Vrabel with the Tennessee Titans.
According to reports, Vrabel isn’t a lock to return, bringing headwinds of finality to the regular-season finale Sunday in Nashville against the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Titans (5-11) entered Week 18 as the only AFC South team eliminated from the playoffs.
The game is expected to be the last in a Titans uniform for quarterback Ryan Tannehill, and it could be the end of running back Derrick Henry’s time with the team.
Both players are in the final years of their contracts and Carthon, hired in January 2023, inherited Vrabel as a head coach.
Vrabel, a former linebacker in the NFL and All-American defensive lineman at Ohio State, has been linked to potential openings elsewhere, most prominently as a possible replacement with the New England Patriots if Bill Belichick exits Foxborough. Vrabel, 48, played for the Patriots from 2001-08 and was on three of the team’s Super Bowl championship rosters. He’s a member of the Patriots Hall of Fame.
Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk chose Carthon as GM over Vrabel’s favored in-house candidate, vice president of player personnel Ryan Cowden. There is no known divide between Carthon and Vrabel since the two were paired atop the team’s power structure, however.
Hired in 2018, Vrabel has a 55-48 record, including 2-3 in the playoffs, entering Week 18, but the Titans are 5-18 in the past 23 games. Tennessee lost the final seven games of the 2022 season.
Vrabel’s contract runs through 2025, with a team option for 2026.
–Field Level Media
Comments