John Harbaugh Bails On Titans: Three silver linings they will use to pivot to their new head coach hire

Did the Titans get embarrassed by #HarbaughWatch?

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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The John Harbaugh sweepstakes has concluded the way we originally expected it to: he is set to become the new head coach of the New York Giants.

After a true marathon of #HarbaughWatch during his in-person visit with the Giants on Wednesday, it finally came out just after midnight on the east coast that he was going to sign a contract there. This came after talk of him leaving the meeting to return to his home in Baltimore, where he would receive the Titans search party on Thursday for their opportunity to win him over.

Amy Adams Strunk left her home in Houston for Nashville Wednesday afternoon in preparation for this visit. It’s fair to point out that she would not have been engaged in this Hail Mary attempt to woo Harbaugh if she were not prepared to match the roughly $20M annual salary he was looking for, proving her dedication to getting this hire right no matter the price. It’s also fair to point out that I wrote a plea to GM Mike Borgonzi and President of Football Operations Chad Brinker within hours of Harbaugh being fired, saying they owed it to this fanbase and to the organization to run a full-court press on hiring him even if it felt futile. To their credit, that’s precisely what they did.

So what now? Were the Titans just used by Harbaugh? Do they leave this embarrassed? And what’s the next step in the coaching search?

Did John Harbaugh use the Titans as leverage?

Short answer: yes! This is the nature of a bidding war for someone in a position of leverage. Harbaugh was using his stated candidates in the media—Tennessee, New York and Atlanta—to get the best possible offer. The real question here is whether they were being used in bad faith by Harbaugh. Was he leveraging his real interest in the Titans job, or was he purely feigning interest in the opening to get more from the Giants?

I’m not sure! But I am sure that it doesn’t matter any longer. I think the Titans were legitimately his second choice. There’s no doubt the rich history, prestige, and stability of the Giants job was calling to Harbaugh above all else in this phase of his life. But had the Giants job not been open (or rather, had they not given him the sun, moon and stars) I do think he would have considered the Titans next.

The Giants were uniquely positioned to offer him literally anything he wanted, though, from a blank check to the ability to fire and rehire the GM position (a guy the Giants themselves are already marginally attached to). So if New York was his preference on paper, what more could Titans brass possibly offer him than… well, everything? He was already getting that from the team he wanted to coach. So he ultimately saved Tennessee’s time by not having them out to spend a day in a sham interview setting.

Do they come out of this embarrassed? I really don’t see how.

That’s the first of the silver linings here for Tennessee: you look better today than when this sweepstakes began. The national perception when Harbaugh was fired a week ago was largely that a volatile rebuild job like Tennessee wasn’t the kind of place this kind of coach would land. Now a week later, you look like the widely-accepted runner up in the chase for the hottest coach on the market. Plenty in media openly debate and mock the validity of any chance you might have had, but that second place trophy in the ledger of the official narrative exists nonetheless. You got favorable treatment from the media machine all week, with national reporters singing the praises of your QB + GM + war chest. It was made clear just how much the top coach was “thinking” (real or not) about taking your job. It looks better today than it did before, and that’s a win.

The second silver lining is that a job more desirable than yours is now taken. The pool of openings is cut from nine down to eight, and if we’re keeping it a buck, the Giants job was the consensus better opening. Outside of debatable QB and GM categories (I say clear advantage Titans), more cap room, and a slightly better draft situation, every other category leans in the Giants favor. Ownership, prestige, security, stability, roster, etc. One less job to worry about!

And finally, remember that there are plenty of other fish in the sea. It would be hard for this team to forget, seeing as they’re in the middle of interviewing almost all of them. They have in-person meetings with Brian Daboll, Mike McCarthy, and Jonathan Gannon this weekend, as well as a zoom with Robert Saleh on Sunday. Starting Monday, they can begin in-person interviews with coaches currently employed by other teams. In other words, it’s the green light for them to invite their second round of finalists in for talks with brass, ownership, and key players at the facility. Paul Kuharsky reported Thursday morning that the finalists group will likely be just 3-4 people, which is fewer than the half-dozen or so I thought they’d bring in.

This raises one final question. Now that the “starters pistol” for the coaching derby has been sounded by Harbaugh and the Giants, does Tennessee accelerate their process at all? I know they’d like to complete both rounds of interviews fully and come to a decision in due time, but everybody in the league is surely starting to feel the pressure in this game of musical chairs. Will they cut things short on one of their finalist interviews, “not letting a guy leave the building” like they did with Callahan two years ago? We’ll see. I’m beginning to thing this thing could move quickly, and that next week I’ll be headed to St. Thomas Sports Park to meet the new head coach of the Tennessee Titans.

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