Mike Vrabel is now favored to twist the knife in Titans fans again, but there’s good news and bad news
Is Mike Vrabel winning this breakup as hard as you can possibly win a breakup? The streets are asking.
The New England Patriots currently sit atop the AFC as the #1 seed today, as the only team with 11 wins. The Tennessee Titans sit at the bottom of the AFC as the #16 seed today, as the only team with just 1 win. Just a season and a half removed from Amy Adams Strunk’s decision to fire Mike Vrabel following 2023, his immediate success in New England isn’t exactly a good look for the Titans!
And as of Week 14, he is now the odds-on favorite to win the NFL Coach of the Year Award for a second time.
According to global prediction site Polymarket, Vrabel now has a 52% chance of taking home the hardware again. His first Coach of the Year award came in 2021 when the Titans finished 12-5 and earned the #1 seed in the AFC despite a historic number of injuries. Now that he’s positioned to earn the top spot in the conference again, he’s getting top consideration for the award for a second time in half a decade. And for suffering Titans fans, there’s some good news and bad news to consider.
Mike Vrabel is favored to win NFL Coach of the Year again
The bad news is that, well, this breakup has gone about as poorly as it possibly could have for you. Nobody likes when their ex finds immediate, roaring success. And it only stings worse if you yourself find immediate… homelessness? Financial ruin? Despair in the dating world? Whatever you want to call the listless Titans of the past two seasons, it’s hard to really overstate the disaster.
I’d kill for a time machine to go back to that Tuesday in 2024 when the news broke that Amy Adams Strunk was firing Mike Vrabel. I remember broadcasting and writing that afternoon, talking about the mistake the Titans may have just made. Everybody who truly understands the end of the Vrabel tenure knows that firing Head Coach Mike Vrabel was easy to argue against, but firing General Manager/Titans HQ force of nature Mike Vrabel felt somewhat unavoidable in the moment. In other words, it was what Vrabel had become outside of his duties as the actual coach of the team that got him canned.
But even still, it was a decision that felt liable to come back to bite them. Likely, even. And so far, that’s exactly what’s happened. If I could go back to that day, I’d love to say into a camera that Vrabel would get another head job after one year off, he’d win coach of the year immediately, his team would get the AFC #1 seed immediately, and they’d reach the Super Bowl. Imagine the responses from Titans fans that would have gotten in the moment? How insane would that have sounded, even to the staunchest Vrabel defender? Now, of course, none of those things have actually come to pass yet. It’s highly unlikely all of them will. But if we were revisiting that bold prediction today, it would sound awfully prophetic at this point, wouldn’t it!
Now here’s the good news for Titans fans who aren’t sure how much more of this nightmare they can bear: I really doubt any of the above-mentioned things happen besides the AFC #1 seed. I do not think this Patriots team will reach the Super Bowl, and I do not think Mike Vrabel will win his second NFL Coach of the Year award in 2025.
Why? Drake Maye. Maye is the favorite to win the MVP right now, and he deserves it. He checks the eye test box, the nerd stats box, and the top seed box we typically look for in MVP candidates. It’s also always helpful to your case if you’re a new, fresh face to vote on.
This is what will keep Vrabel from winning COTY. Narratively, the award-winning recognition has to go to one guy or another within the same organization. There’s a reason why MVP and COTY (and Executive of the Year, for that matter) very rarely overlap on the same team. In 2020 and 2021, Matt LaFleur was a textbook Coach of the Year candidate twice. He was setting NFL records for winning percentage in a coaching career. So why didn’t he win? At least in large part, because Aaron Rodgers won back-to-back MVP’s. He got the hardware recognition for those teams. And if somebody is getting awarded for this Patriots season, I think it’ll be Drake Maye.