‘It was nasty’ — Behind the scenes look at halftime booing of Brian Callahan in front of Titans’ ownership in home loss to Colts

What happened inside that tunnel?

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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The Tennessee Titans fell to 0-3 on Sunday in their ugliest loss of the season. The division rival Indianapolis Colts came into Nashville and beat up on Brian Callahan’s squad, 41-20, unmasking the Titans’ incompetence in a handful of areas. WR Michael Pittman shared after the game the single most damning observation about this Titans operation that we’ve heard yet.

But the scene in Nissan Stadium at halftime was the ugliest moment of an overall terrible day, as a half-full building of fans poured boos and jeers onto anybody wearing two-tone blue as they entered the locker room tunnel. The specific timing of this colossal meltdown could not have been poorer, as all of the Titans’ leadership was present in the tunnel waiting to come out for a halftime ceremony. We saw what it looked like from a fan’s perspective all over social media, but now we’ve heard a pair of firsthand accounts from the perspective of ownership:

Firsthand perspective from inside the Titans’ tunnel

It was a surreal moment, one in which a Titans team that was practically wearing the splattered tomatoes of an entire fanbase had to run past controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk and most of the rest of the franchise’s executive leadership.

Ramon Foster shared his experience from standing with the ownership gaggle in that tunnel on his 104.5 The Zone radio show, Ramon & Will, Monday morning. He explained how he was standing with Strunk, Titans executives, and Mike Keith waiting to head out onto the field for Keith’s Ring Of Honor induction ceremony as the final seconds of the half ticked by.

They couldn’t see what was happening from inside the tunnel, so they were working to piece together the sequence by listening to it. Naturally, it was confusing to think they heard a pair of consecutive timeouts, followed by a delay of game, followed by a missed kick. But that’s exactly what happened, and it was the impetus for the aggressive booing that took place as the team ran by.

“At the end of half, you hear Colts fans get loud,” Foster said. “And as the Titans are walking in, I’ll just say this, everybody that was on the field for Mike’s ceremony was in the tunnel. And all of the boos, all of the yelling, cussing was very clear. It was very loud. It was directed at players, it was directed at coaches, it was directed at ownership. It was nasty.”

I’m not sure it can get any uglier in a single gameday moment than that. For a coaching staff fighting for their lives with a bad and struggling football team, the last thing you want is to be publicly humiliated in front of your employers. As Foster put it, “your bosses, your ownership, every executive that you could think of heard directly from the fan base as coach Callahan walks in with a straight face and head up high trying to not hear it.”

Will Amy Adams Strunk Be Able To Tune Out The Noise?

But you can’t simply “not hear it,” especially when you’re coming face to face with the people who hold your fate in the palm of their hands. In a moment of unavoidable vulnerability, Titans’ legend Dr. Kevin Dyson was on 104.5 for the postgame show Sunday afternoon after being a part of this halftime ceremony, and he shared his perspective:

“What concerns me the most about that is I was in a tunnel when Amy Adams Strunk, Burke Nihill, and others who were there listened to that<” Dyson said. “It’s different when it’s on ESPN, or on the radio, or in a newspaper, or on social media, and that’s why I was wondering how that affected them hearing that.”

It’s impossible not to wonder how that will impact Adams Strunk specifically. The reality is that she has garnered a reputation in recent years of having a quick trigger finger and breeding instability, something she’s actively trying to beat the allegations on by embracing organizational patience with this current regime.

But when the story on former GM Jon Robinson is that she endured a game of sarcastic thanks from Eagles fans for giving them AJ Brown, being laughed at and jeered for three hours as the Eagles and Brown beat down her football team, and then Robinson was fired that week… how can we not wonder if that same decision-maker won’t let a visceral scene like she experienced in that tunnel on Sunday impact her ability to stick to her stated goal of patience?

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