A New Era: The Search for a New Titans General Manager and Head Coach Begins

The Titans have began their search in earnest for a new General Manager and Head Coach this week. New team President Steve Underwood hinted at his first press conference that there would be no particular timetable for hiring a man at each position. However the first few days of interviews have made it clear that the Titans are going through the traditional hiring method of; General Manager first, Head Coach second. I personally agree with this method as the General Manager should have significant input, or full autonomy, in selecting the team's new head coach.

Underwood stated that he was working from a list of fourteen General Manager candidates (which had been cut down from an original list of eighty). So far we are aware of eleven candidates that the Titans have attempted to interview or are in the process of interviewing. Those being:

- Eric DeCosta (denied interview request)
- Duke Tobin (denied interview request)
- Chris Ballard (permission granted by Chiefs)
- Jon Robinson (interview Friday)
- Chris Polian (interview Friday)
- Marc Ross (interviewed Thursday)
- Martin Mayhew (interviewed Wednesday)
- George Paton (request made)
- Ted Sundquist (interviewed Thursday)
- Blake Beddingfield (internal candidate)
- Jimmy Raye III (reported interest by NFL.com)

This is a comprehensive candidate list which is nice to see as the Titans have been known to conduct 'scam' interviews leading to internal appointments in the past. Some names of interest, in my view, would be Jon Robinson, George Paton and Chris Ballard.

My personal favourite is Chris Ballard, he is well-respected around the league and admired within the Chiefs organisation. He has an extensive background in player analysis and has hit on a good number of Pro Bowl players during his time as a scout with the Bears and in a higher front office role in Kansas City.

Ballard is my preference for the vacant Titan's General Manager position

An interesting tidbit that I have noticed during the interview process is that the Titans have yet to contact any prospective Head Coaches. This, as mentioned in the introduction of this article, directly contradicts statements made by Underwood. It is highly possible that Amy Adams Strunk (AAS) has either been advised, or independently decided, to allow the new General Manager to make that hire (or at the very least have a significant input). This would be preferable to a situation where the two positions were filled independently of each other by AAS and a situation could arise, if there is a lack of success, that the GM and HC begin finger pointing as the only accountability for the hires lies with the owner.

Forecasting who some of the General Manager candidates would hire as their Head Coaches is hard. An easy connection can be made in two instances: with Chris Ballard & Doug Pederson and Jon Robinson & Josh McDaniels. Both of those combinations would be interesting and enticing to me.

One thing we should all hope for is that the search for a new Head Coach is as comprehensive as the search for a new General Manager. No one would like a lazy internal hire like Mike Mularkey without probing the field of potential candidates.

I'll leave you with some men that I think would be good Head Coach candidates:

- Hue Jackson
- Adam Gase
- Doug Pederson
- Josh McDaniels
- Rich Bisaccia
- Chip Kelly
- Teryl Austin
- Mike Smith
- Mike Shula

Go Titans!