Titans candidate Mike McCarthy has second meeting with head coach hiring committee on Friday and Saturday
Former Cowboys and Packers head coach Mike McCarthy has an in-depth meeting with the Titans this weekend.
The Tennessee Titans’ search for their next head coach is accelerating rapidly.
The stated plan, as of the middle of this week, was for the search committee to complete their list of 18 round one interviews (which now appears to actually be just 16) through Sunday the 18th.
Then, beginning on Monday, the 19th, when the embargo on in-person interviews with coaches currently employed who are out of the playoffs is lifted, they will begin a second round of finalist interviews.
But in a crowded field of eight teams looking for a new coach, things move quickly, and everybody has to be willing to adapt. So the Titans seem to be getting started on their next phase early with a familiar candidate.
Mike McCarthy is meeting with Titans brass for a second time
Former Cowboys and Packers head coach Mike McCarthy is, at the time of writing this Saturday morning, in the Titans’ facility for an interview. This was publicly expected heading into the weekend. What wasn’t publicly understood is that this is actually his second meeting with the team, and this interview spans multiple days.
A source tells A to Z Sports that Mike McCarthy got dinner with Titans brass Friday night and is now spending the full day Saturday meeting with the folks at St. Thomas Sports Park. Friday’s dinner wasn’t his first meeting with Titans leadership in this process, though.
As I initially reported on the Saturday of Week 18, interviewing McCarthy was always in the Titans’ plans. News from national sources of his intent to interview with the Titans came nearly a week after my report, which led to some confusion and uncertainty during the first week of the offseason.
As it turns out, Titans GM Mike Borgonzi and president of football operations Chad Brinker actually met with McCarthy very early on in this process. That in-person meeting went very well. McCarthy and Brinker know each other already from their time together in Green Bay, and while Borgonzi had never met the veteran coach, it seems they really hit it off.
Paul Kuharsky reported earlier this week that the Titans’ official list of finalists is expected to be three or four names long. This is technically McCarthy’s first official interview with the entire search committee, and he is not, by the team’s definition, a “finalist” yet.
He will need a second official interview with the committee to meet that standard. But setting labels aside, it’s unclear if the team would have a third, in-depth “finalist” meeting with McCarthy just a few short days after this weekend’s in-depth interview. Would they go to that trouble just to technically hire an official “finalist” if he were their pick? We will see.
While McCarthy doesn’t have any other teams publicly requesting an interview with him at this time, I will not be surprised to see the Steelers change that soon. McCarthy is from Pittsburgh, and his parents still live there. A resume of Green Bay, Dallas, and Pittsburgh would be a pretty remarkable pedigree, and McCarthy knows it.