2025 offseason - present day
Here the Titans are again, having just fired Carthon and gotten back into the GM search, and it just feels like the same story anymore. It seems as if Strunk has not learned from her mistakes, and her two biggest faults are that she is way too reactionary at all times, and that she does not ever have a GM and head coach hired at the same time and truly in lockstep.
The last time the Titans had the same GM and head coach from the previous season was in 2022, and now the earliest that will happen again is 2026. But with how things are trending for Brian Callahan, it is very likely that he is fired at the end of the 2025 season or before, so it may not be until 2026 that the Titans have continuity at head coach and GM.
Ultimately, Stunk's problems just build upon themselves, and most noticeably, you can never truly build anything if you are always making changes at head coach and GM. And when you continually fire one guy and not the other, you contribute to a culture of finger pointing and playing the blame game, which is always toxic.
But honestly, until Strunk can figure out the importance of having both the GM and head coach hired and fired at the same time, this may continue to happen. When you bring in one, whether that be a head coach or GM, you generally want to give him at least two years, even for Strunk's standards of impatience.
But when you do that, there is a good chance that the person you most recently brought in will not like the other person who was previously in place. So then you have to effectively pick one or the other, and then it is likely that the same process plays out the next year, and never ends unless you get lucky and make two extremely competent hires who work well together.
Now, there were some reports that Carthon had some lazy tendencies and would even sleep on plane rides back home from away games while other executives were watching film. If those reports are true, then maybe Strunk did make the right decision to fire him, but in that case, should she not have had a better judge of character when she hired him?
When it comes to evaluating how competent NFL franchises are, they are always judged most heavily by four individuals - the owner, GM, head coach, and quarterback.
For the Titans, Adams Strunk has been extremely impulsive and inconsistent in terms of decision making, the GM was just fired again, the head coach is already in trouble after year one, and who knows what happens at quarterback in 2025. This franchise is a hot mess across the board.
Yes, there are some exciting finalists for the Titans' GM job. Who knows how much power they will actually have with Brinker supposedly being in charge, and who knows if Adams Strunk will possess enough patience to see it through.
Right now, there's no reason to have any real optimism, and as much as it hurts to say, the Titans have entered clown-show territory. Hopefully Strunk strikes gold and hires the right GM, while also being right about giving Callahan another chance.
Their current direction isn't comforting.