Grading Mike Vrabel’s first three years as head coach

Game Preparation

Let me start off this section by making one thing very clear: it’s hard to win in the National Football League. While I will nitpick on a few games over the past three seasons, Vrabel has gone 29-19 in the regular season, with a 2-2 record in the playoffs. Sustained success is the holy grail in the NFL and, so far, Vrabel has provided that.

Among those 31 total victories are some extremely impressive wins over some extremely tough teams. I’d argue that Vrabel wasted essentially no time in proving his worth as a head coach, leading the team to a gutsy and creative 20-17 victory over division rival Houston in his second game as head coach. Blaine Gabbert started at quarterback in place of an injured Mariota, while Kevin Pamphile and Tyler Marz started at the tackle positions.

Given the Titans’ consistent struggles with Houston, showing the ability to prepare for and win a game against them while severely undermanned is proof of Vrabel’s ability to prepare for individual games.

Vrabel has tacked on impressive wins over the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, with Tannehill out-dueling Patrick Mahomes in 2019’s 35-32 shootout. He followed that up with back-to-back upset wins over the Bill Belichick’s Patriots and John Harbaugh’s Ravens in the playoffs. In both games, the Titans appeared the more prepared and focused team.

Clearly, no moment is “too big” for Mike Vrabel. He is not intimidated by the team or coach that will stand across the sideline from him and excels at identifying ways to keep the Titans competitive when taking on stronger opponents. However, a key trait of great teams is the ability to avoid consistently dropping to the level of their opponents. This is an issue that Vrabel has yet to overcome.

The Titans have too often failed to “get up” for games that they should have easily won. Their Week 8 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, a team who was 1-5-1 and with a makeshift offensive line going into the game, was particularly pathetic. The Titans were slow out the gates and were dominated by the Bengals.

While the Cleveland Browns were a very strong and more successful team than the Titans this season, they absolutely embarrassed the home team when the two teams faced off in Week 13. The Titans went into halftime down 38-7, an insurmountable lead, thanks to failing to prepare for Cleveland’s passing attack.

History repeated itself three weeks later against the Green Bay Packers, as the Titans showed up either scared to play in the snow or scared of Aaron Rodgers (or both). They never threatened the Packers in front of a national audience, going home with a 40-14 loss.

Don’t get me wrong, all teams are going to have “ups and downs” in their levels of play throughout the season. But Vrabel is still unable to suppress those massive fluctuations that result in losses to bad teams like Cincinnati or embarrassing losses to teams like Cleveland or Green Bay — the types of teams they should be bringing their best effort for.

Before this team can execute the “good to great” jump, Vrabel will need to figure out how to have the team prepared and focused for a minimum of 16 individual games per season. Otherwise, the Titans will continue to watch the Super Bowl from home.

Recency bias should cause me to dock Vrabel down a peg or two for some shoddy 2020 performances. However, looking at the big picture here, he does produce a team that’s more prepared on a weekly basis than most in the NFL.

I’ll give Vrabel a B+ here.