A look at Tennessee Titans interim Head Coach Mike Mularkey

Ken Whisenhunt has been fired from the Tennessee Titans, and honestly it is a move that was going to be made sooner or later. The worst thing that could have happened to the Titans was that Ken Whisnehunt went on a run against a weak division late in the year and kept his job.

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So, why not make a move now and see what you have not only from a coaches standpoint, but also to see if the Titans have the talent to be successful and if they were just misusing it. Or, if the Titans need to fix the GM situation as well as the HC position.

What happens these next few weeks will be as much about Ruston Webster as it will be about Mike Mularkey, but let’s look at the interim Head Coach for now.

Why you should be excited:

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I believe that this team now has two head coaches, but only one has the potential to actually stay on as the HC next year. Those two people are Mike Mularkey who will essentially be the offensive coordinator with full offensive play calling power, and Dick LeBeau his mirror image on defense.

Mularkey’s last stint as a play caller (not including his time as a head coach because again I don’t think that is what he really is now) he has been really good. Let’s look at his time in Atlanta.

2008: 14th passing offense, 2nd rushing offense, 10th scoring

2009: 14th passing offense, 15th rushing offense, 13th scoring

2010: 15th passing offense, 12th rushing offense, 5th scoring

2011: 8th passing offense, 17th rushing offense, 7th scoring

So overall he never had a season where his offenses were below average in passing or scoring, and only one where they were only one spot below average in rushing. During this time he also had a top-10 scoring unit three of his four years.

Those are pretty great numbers, and he set up the offense to be very easy to run for any future OCs.

For a young QB like Marcus Mariota, this is the best possible scenario. Why? Because never in his tenure as an OC has Mularkey ever had a unit that was worse than top-8 in quarterback sacks (5th, 8th, 3rd, 6th).

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Why you shouldn’t be excited.

He hasn’t won games as a HC, plain and simple. Obviously if he had, the Titans wouldn’t have been able to hire him as an OC, much less a TE coach. Mularkey has only won one-third of his games as a head coach in this league.

Now, to be fair he was the head coach of two of the worst franchises in the last two decades in the Buffalo Bills and the Jacksonville Jaguars, and he never had a quarterback as talented as Marcus Mariota.

However at the end of the day wins are the name of the game, so while he may be a great short term option, he is clearly a band-aid not a remedy.

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