Amy Adams Strunk approves Titans front office change to make head coach opening more attractive, but leadership eats crow in the process

The Titans are smart to change their minds on this, but it means they were wrong in the first place.

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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The Tennessee Titans ended up getting a head start on the offseason news circuit 48 hours before their final game.

On Friday afternoon, the news broke that owner Amy Adams Strunk had greenlit a front office shake up that changed the official division of power between President of Football Operations Chad Brinker and General Manager Mike Borgonzi. The structure of this team is changing, but in an effort to clarify things, others have grown muddled. Here’s why they made the change, and what it means ahead of their critical head coaching search.

What the Titans front office shake up really means

The team released this official statement from Amy Adams Strunk shortly following the news breaking in unison from national and local outlets alike. Clearly, this was information that had made it’s way through sourced back-channels typically dominated by agents. And it’s not surprising that’s the case, given that this idea was apparently brought to Strunk by Brinker and Borgonzi weeks ago according to her statement.

“There is long-term benefit to clarifying and honing the focus areas of our football leadership” Strunk’s statement reads. “For that reason, we’re returning to a front office that feels more straightforward to them and to me.”

Clarification of roles publicly seems to be the primary purpose of this formal change. The previous power structure was linear, with the head coach reporting to the GM, GM to Brinker, and Brinker to Strunk. This was a point of significant confusion last year when Borgonzi was hired to fill the spot vacated by Carthon, though the explanation was truly quite simple. The report structure was linear, and Brinker had technical veto power over the entirety of the football operation. But he empowered Borgonzi to do his job maintaining the roster, handling transactions, and manning the draft board. In all of my conversations with people on and off the record, both currently employed and formerly employed, I’ve never once been given reason to believe this wasn’t the truth. Borgonzi has been the functional GM with complete roster control since he took the job. Brinker was not ever the shadow GM.

Now, Borgonzi’s power isn’t a technically “allowed” power. It’s formal power, certified in writing. What does that change? Functionally, in their capacity as GM and President of Football Operations, not much. Technically, it changes the expressed powers of their roles. In that sense, it’s a step up for Borgonzi and a step down for Brinker. Where previously Brinker oversaw Borgonzi, they are now much more equal. In terms of who they answer too, they are precisely equals. As explained in the statement, Borgonzi now answers directly to Strunk instead of Brinker. That is the part of this shake up that changes the most functionally, though Mike’s direct line to Amy is nothing new. The two of them have had an active working relationship since he was hired. He is the General Manager of her football team, after all. The real change here is that Borgonzi won’t be explicitly required to run every decision he makes through Brinker anymore.

Again, focusing on what actually changes here, what does that mean? There’s a dangerous amount of room for entertaining office politics speculation here. There’s a lot to dig into on that front that I will leave to the social media streets for now. Here’s what I feel good about: Mike and Chad have worked as a team, largely tied at the hip, since Brinker hired him last winter. They seem to see a lot of things similarly. Their relationship was built on strong mutual respect for each other.

Borgonzi’s first solo press conference strongly trumpeted this sentiment in early November. “I get the question, I do” Borgonzi ancknowledged, when asked about the divide of power. “And Chad is invaluable to me. Chad hired me, Amy (Adams Strunk) hired me to really construct the roster. That’s what they hired me for. And they empowered me to do that. And what Chad does is he has knowledge in scouting, he’s got knowledge in the salary cap strategy. Chad is really smart. And Chad supports me with all the decisions that I make. And it’s no different in every other organization. You can say the titles and who’s above who. It’s the same structure in every organization. It’s— you got the GM, you have your VP of strategy cap, and then you got the head coach. And whatever title you want to give them, those are the three people that work together to make decisions. And there’s no one person that like, he’s got the 53,— like I’m going to go rogue and just make a pick. But they empowered me to make those decisions here, to draft players, to sign players, to construct the roster.”

In that same press availability, Borgonzi addressed the impending coaching search in a way that made it pretty clear to those of us paying attention: he would be leading the search. “We’re in the process with it now,” he explained, “but one thing that me and Chad (Brinker) have talked about, too, is  the GM and the head coach work together every day. So, I think it’s imperative that we make this decision, who’s the best leader of this organization coming forward? I don’t really want to touch on the head coaching topic, but I do want to mention this though. But me and Chad have had conversations and it’s important that it’s a fit, not only fit for the organization, we want a leader here. I don’t care if it’s defense, offense, that they have a working relationship with the GM, myself. So we’ll come together, we’ll make the best decision for that.”

He mentioned the relationship between GM and coach as the key twice. He said they’d make the best decision to achieve that end. The writing on the wall was written in sharpie from that point forward: Mike will lead the search.

Unless something significant happened to change Brinker and Borgonzi’s dynamic, such as a disagreement over how the Callahan firing was handled for example, I don’t see that changing. And while I know they haven’t seen 100% of things the same way this past year, naturally, I don’t yet have good reason to believe that mutual respect and teamwork has been lost. So on that front, the powers on paper have shifted, but I don’t currently see where that’s impacting their functional relationship. The initial purpose of this was PR. So why, and why now?

Why did the Titans do this now?

Short answer: the coaching search. The Titans are focused on making this head coaching vacancy as attractive as possible, and this is an effort to do just that.

Coaching candidates were sure to have plenty of questions about the way this worked. This change eliminates any confusion or concerns on that front.

The league office had to look into who the Titans’ “primary football executive” was when the GM job was up for grabs last winter, as their structure was among the more unique setups in the league. They weren’t the only team built like this, but it’s just vague enough that the league had to confirm the finer points of the power structure.

CBS’s Jonathan Jones posited on X.com Friday that the league may have been pushing for this clarification from the Titans. I’m told that’s not actually the case, but for Jones to say this so plainly leaves me suspicious of where there’s smoke.

At the very least, it appears to be true that the setup wasn’t totally clear to everybody around the league. This announcement, aimed at clarifying perception for folks outside the building instead of changing much about how things function inside the building, hopefully sets the record straight.

The Titans’ 180 on structure is smart, but puts a foot in their mouths

This decision is a wise one, if you ask me. This gets everybody on the same page, it maximizes the appeal of the head coaching job, and it explicitly protects the powers of your GM role. And if it’s true that this was a decision initiated at least in part by Chad Brinker, it’s humble leadership.

But it’s also an admission that the past year spent pushing their linear structure was wrong. If this is the right move, which I believe it is, then they were wrong to push their old structure as the way of the future in the NFL. We cannot erase what was sold on this front. They were firm believers in it. They emphasized how they weren’t the only teams doing it. They pushed back on criticism and calls for them to go with what they now themselves admit is more traditional and straightforward.

I’m a fan of when people are willing to change their minds, especially if it means doing the right thing. But this change of heart inherently paints everything they said about the old structure in an uglier light.

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