Tennessee Titans President and CEO Burke Nihill finally spoke on video, more than a week after the organization fired three vice presidents and days after the A to Z Sports Titans Fan Sentiment Survey wrapped up.

The survey, put together by our own Easton Freeze, drew a flood of entries from diehard Titans fans. Many of them are angry, and a growing number are apathetic. One number stood out. Of the fans who took part, 63% want to hear from controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk. That makes sense for a team that is 6-33 since the start of the 2024 season.

Nihill sent a statement to A to Z Sports ahead of the survey. Then he sat down with Cory Curtis of WKRN News 2 for an 11-minute interview, which the station published on its YouTube channel.

Burke Nihill speaks for Amy Adams Strunk

Curtis asked about Strunk with his second question. Specifically, he said people want to know why she isn’t out front sharing the grief she feels alongside the fans.

Nihill answered for her.

“Amy is a fan first and foremost. As a little girl, she was following this team and the players were her heroes. And the same is true today. Some of my favorite moments are coming around the corner and seeing her hugging Jeffery Simmons and just expressing her appreciation for Jeffery as a person and as a player and the passion he plays with.”

“She loves this team. She’s passionate about this team. And she is, she’s feeling just great disappointment. She’s feeling a lot of grief knowing that it’s not fun for anybody. It’s not fun for her to have to be in this stretch of losing. And she desperately wants that to turn around. Turn around and is doing everything she can to support turning it around. But also knowing that it’s not just that her team that she’s grown up loving is losing and just for herself. She understands that we all have a responsibility to our fans to do better. And, you know, she’s sorry that we’re not doing better.”

“And I promise you, she is doing everything she can and everyone who punches in a key code every Monday to refocus and try to do better the next week and for the long term. She’s sorry. She’s disappointed. She’s grieving. She desperately wants the turnaround, and it’s not fun for her. It’s not for anybody.”

She’s sorry. But she isn’t willing to say it herself. She sent Nihill to say it.

To me, that’s the frustrating part. The fans said overwhelmingly that they want to hear from her. The survey results show they don’t even care much what she says. They want her to show up and own this with her own voice and her own words.

Tennessee is coming up on four years since it sat atop the AFC South at 7-3 after beating Green Bay on Thursday Night Football on Nov. 17, 2022. The collapse that followed started this whole stretch. The Titans are 0-5 now and 12-51 over their last 63 games.

And still, nothing from the owner. I’m sure she’s furious about all of it. This is a family business, and she is a fan first. That didn’t stop another owner from stepping up to the microphone this week.

Gayle Benson showed how easy it is

New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson spoke at the Quarterback Club about her frustration with how the Saints started the season:

“I hear the frustration directed toward our team. It is not lost on me. Our fans invest their time and their hearts in the Saints. They are right to expect more than we have delivered. As an owner, the responsibility does start with me. I will not make excuses and I will not accept this level of performance as our standard. I am committed to making the decisions necessary to improve this team. Everyone in this organization understands the urgency. We must prepare better, execute consistently, and correct the mistakes that are costing us the games. Words will not restore our fans’ confidence. Our performance must do that.”

She’s right that words won’t fix it. But she went up there and said it straight anyway. I don’t see how that’s so difficult.

So once again, the Titans miss the mark.

Cory Curtis did bring up our survey during the interview. Nihill talked about how the team surveys its own fans every Monday. Cory joked that if he were a fan filling out a survey with his team at 0-5, he’d probably answer zeros across the board.

Yes, winning fixes things. We all know that. But apathy has set in with this fan base, and Tennessee will keep losing fans to pumpkin patches and apple orchards all fall. The Titans need to beat the Colts. Until then, the weight falls on a head coach who talks to the media four times a week and on Nihill, who went on the YouTube channel of the local tv station the team partners with for preseason games.

That’s a soft landing. I admit, 11 minutes was longer than I expected him to stay.

The ‘same people’ are not in charge

I do need to correct how Cory Curtis opened the interview.

“I’d like to remind people, the same people are in charge now that were in charge when the Titans had 6 straight winning seasons and 4 trips to the playoffs,” Curtis said.

That’s factually incorrect.

Nihill became president and CEO in May 2020. Sure, he was there for the 2020 and 2021 playoff seasons. But head coach Mike Vrabel, general manager Jon Robinson, and a core on both sides of the ball had already built that team.

Former team president Steve Underwood came back, out of retirement, in 2015 alongside Strunk and hired Mike Mularkey and Robinson as head coach and general manager to fix things ahead of the 2016 season. Underwood and Robinson then decided that even a 2017 playoff win under Mularkey wasn’t good enough, and they brought in Vrabel to take it to the next level in 2018. That worked. Then 2019’s playoff run started the three year stretch.

Four playoff trips in six years is true. Nihill held his role for only two of those six winning seasons from 2016-21. Underwood built it and held it for the rest.

Who’s still here from those teams? Not Robinson, Vrabel, Mularkey, or Underwood. Not the quarterback or the running back. Jeffery Simmons was part of three of those playoff trips. Long snapper Morgan Cox is still here, and so is safety Amani Hooker. That’s about it.

Strunk is still in charge. Good owners can step back and let the people they hire do their jobs. But Mularkey, Underwood, and Robinson deserve far more credit than “the same people” gives them. All three have been gone a long time. . . and so have the wins.