Stories like this don't come along very often, but late on Tuesday night, the New York Giants released linebacker Bobby Okereke.
On its surface, that doesn't have anything to do with the Tennessee Titans, but then you take a deeper look, and you find multiple connections. During his three-year stint in New York, Okereke played under then-Giants head coach and current Titans offensive coordinator Brian Daboll. Not only did he play for Daboll, but he was a team captain every year he was there.
That is a significant link, but it isn't the last thread connecting him to the Titans. Before the Giants, Okereke was with the team that drafted him, the Indianapolis Colts. In his final year with the Colts (2022) before joining the Giants in free agency, Okereke played under then-Colts defensive coordinator and current Titans defensive coordinator Gus Bradley.
Free agent LB Bobby Okerke has multiple connections to the Titans
What gets even stranger is that the connections don't stop there. Even though Bradley and Okereke overlapped for a year in 2022, that was the only year they spent together because the first three years of his career, the Colts had Matt Eberflus as the defensive coordinator.
Do you know who the linebackers coach was under Eberflus? It was Dave Borgonzi, the brother of Titans GM Mike Borgonzi and the Titans' newly hired linebackers coach.
Over the course of Okereke's career, he has spent every season with a coach who is currently on the Titans' coaching staff. That is a unicorn of a situation, and it is hard to imagine a free agent who has ever had a more intricate and deeper connection to a coaching staff than the one Okereke has with the new-look Titans.
Considering how well Okereke did under all three coaches and considering that he was a team captain over the last three years, it seems certain that if Okereke wants a job in Tennessee, the Titans will make a spot for him. Sometimes things make too much sense, but it would be very surprising if a great locker room guy like that with deep connections is passed over when he could come in and start right away.