Tennessee Titans Making Mistake Just Sticking With Mike Mularkey
By Erik Lambert
It’s important to note here that Mike Mularkey is not a bad coach. He’s got a proven track record as an assistant that goes back to his days in Pittsburgh where turned around the career of Tommy Maddox and helped make Kordell Stewart a start. That is different. Being an NFL assistant is different. It doesn’t come with near the pressure that being a head coach brings, and it’s a pressure Mularkey has shown he isn’t capable of handling.
So now, seemingly, the only team that still has a question about its head coach is Tennessee. For now, Mike Mularkey the favorite.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 15, 2016
If he’s going to take over the permanent job of running the Tennessee Titans, it would mark the third time in his career where he’s been given command of a pro football team. The first was with the Buffalo Bills from 2004 to 2005. The other was a brief one-year experiment with the Jacksonville Jaguars. Both stints ended ugly. All told, he is 18-39 as a head coach. His only winning season was his first in Buffalo when the team went 9-7. He has not made the playoffs once at any of his stops.
So what about his track record or his winning experience (he still does not have a Super Bowl ring) has convinced the Tennessee Titans that he is the one who will guide the team out of their struggles? Was it his interview knocked out of the park? Is the organization too afraid to switch offensive schemes for fear of making life more difficult on Marcus Mariota?
Or do they just hate change?
Either way it’s difficult in any sense to justify how the Titans arrived at the decision that Mularkey was their guy. The numbers and history simply do not back that up. Maybe this time will be different. Perhaps experience and a solid roster will bring something out of him that those other teams couldn’t. Regardless, it’s going to be difficult selling this one to a frustrated Tennessee fan base.