Let’s pretend for a moment to be Amy Adams Strunk, which when considering all the football and horses and money involved, sounds pretty great.
It’s February. You trust the general manager you hired in early 2016, Jon Robinson, and you should because all he’s done is win and the Titans team he built in 2021 was the AFC’s No. 1 seed despite exorbitant injuries. You give him and coach Mike Vrabel five-year contract extensions, saying among other things in the accompanying statement: “I am proud to say that Jon and Mike will be leading our football team for years to come. … I have seen the team improve on a yearly basis under their direction.”
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Then you trust Robinson’s decision to trade star receiver A.J. Brown on draft night to the Eagles. You know this is a late audible and that Vrabel appeared to be kicked in the stomach when the move was finalized, but also that negotiations had become contentious. You wonder how your team will take a step forward in 2022 without Brown.
You know first-round pick/Brown replacement Treylon Burks will have to be a big part of that. And that several Robinson moves from a year earlier will have to come through.
I'd be surprised if Streicher got that leap to GM right now, but Amy Adams Strunk is keeping everyone on their toes. https://t.co/saV7nXMdjT
— Joe Rexrode (@joerexrode) December 6, 2022
You see 2021 first-round pick Caleb Farley get a shot to be a No. 1 cornerback in camp, look promising at first, prove incapable of trust in games, lose his role and hurt his back again. You see 2021 second-round pick Dillon Radunz get a shot to be the starting right tackle in camp, get pushed around by backups in preseason games and get relegated again to backing up at guard.
You see 2021 big-ticket signee Bud Dupree — five years, $85 million, $35 million of it guaranteed — on the practice field in camp, looking fit and talking about how helpful it is to have a regular offseason as opposed to an offseason of ACL rehab. Then you watch him suffer a hip injury early in the season, then another, miss several games and provide too little impact when he does play.
You go to Philadelphia and sit in the owners box to watch your 7-4, first-place, offensively feeble team take on the 10-1 Eagles, hoping for another sign that the Titans can rise up against the best. You watch Brown go off instead, continuing his best season yet, then reveling in it at your expense. And you have to endure, amid that 35-10 blowout, the taunts of Eagles fans screaming into the box. Add their somewhat contradictory behavior — flipping you off while thanking you for A.J. — to an autumn full of undesirable sights.
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Now let’s please not pretend for a second that Tuesday’s decision by Strunk to fire Robinson was completely out of nowhere. Or that there must be some scandalous explanation beyond job performance.
Let’s also not forget that Strunk has done similar things in the past. She fired a successful coach in Mike Mularkey after the 2017 season, after a playoff win at Kansas City and loss at New England, trusting Robinson’s instinct on that move and the pursuit of Vrabel. In 2016, she sat in the owners box in her hometown of Houston, watching Will Fuller return a punt 67 yards to give the Texans a win over the Titans.
Mularkey fired special teams coach Bobby April the next day. That was quite a news conference, as I recall, Mularkey giving assurances that it was all his call to fire his friend of 20 years.
Strunk has gone reactive NFL owner before. There are mounting issues with Robinson’s personnel moves, since the peak of an outrageously good 2019 draft class and the resulting team’s run to the AFC title game. The product on the field this season reflects compounding mistakes.
But, yes, of course, this was still a shocker, an in-season firing of a GM who is 66-43 and has never had a losing season. And the letting go of Robinson may end up being to Strunk what the letting go of Brown has been to Robinson. That is, a costly mistake.
Robinson declined comment. Strunk is not expected to address the move this week in a news conference, which is certainly a mistake and leaves only a statement from her in a release on the firing. She will leave unanswered whether VP of Player Personnel Ryan Cowden, who will replace Robinson for the rest of the season, is a viable candidate for the job.
She will leave unanswered whether Vrabel — the reigning NFL Coach of the Year, whose star has brightened as Robinson’s has dimmed — will have more say in personnel moves after this. Could he be de facto GM? He will speak Wednesday, at least.
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“Since becoming controlling owner in 2015, my goal has been to raise the standard for what is expected in all facets of our organization,” Strunk said in the statement. “I believe we have made significant progress both on and off the field through investments in leadership, personnel and new ideas. This progress includes the core of our business, the football team itself, which is regularly evaluated both by results (wins and losses) and team construction/roster building. I am proud of what we have accomplished in my eight seasons of ownership, but I believe there is more to be done and higher aspirations to be met. I want to thank Jon for his dedicated work to set this organization on an upward trajectory and I wish him and his family the best.”
Funny how this release, unlike the one from February, said nothing of Robinson’s achievements. To fill in the holes, in his time as GM, only the Chiefs, Patriots and Packers have exceeded his combination of 66 regular-season wins and three playoff wins. That 2019 draft went Jeffery Simmons, Brown, Nate Davis and Amani Hooker, with David Long Jr., in the fifth round. Robinson drafted Derrick Henry in the second round and Kevin Byard in the third, both in 2016, and he pushed open the window of contention by getting Ryan Tannehill from Miami for a fourth-round pick. He had many other draft and free-agency successes, including Denico Autry in 2021.
Robinson also made the aforementioned mistakes, and though Jadeveon Clowney and Julio Jones were aggressive moves and worth pursuing given the information available at the time, both ended up costly and unproductive. Corey Davis, Adoree’ Jackson and Rashaan Evans all proved underwhelming first-round choices. The drafting of Isaiah Wilson in the first round in 2020 yielded many headaches, much embarrassment and zero help at right tackle.
There’s no excuse for Robinson and his staff to whiff as badly as they did on the 2020 and 2021 drafts. Other teams managed just fine amid COVID-19-related limitations. But my question is this: Are we sure, given the 2019 success and the promising early returns on the 2022 class, that over time those two classes wouldn’t look increasingly like outliers?
If you’re Amy Adams Strunk, you might be asking yourself that question. You may have noticed the most recent first-round pick, Burks, coming on lately and hauling in an impressive touchdown in Philly on a play that knocked him out of the game. You might have asked yourself, before Tuesday’s move, how likely it would be for your next general manager to have the longevity and consistent success Robinson has had.
(Photo: Wesley Hitt / Getty Images)