Titans ‘wake up call’ moment creates opportunity to reset fan relationships with before and after picture transformation

NFL legend Walter Payton famously said “When you’re good at something, you’ll tell everyone. When you’re great at something, they’ll tell you.” We all understand that to be the case, in sports as well as in just about any walk of life. And the Tennessee Titans are working hard to embody that mentality as an organization.

That’s something I had the opportunity to talk to Titans President and CEO Burke Nihill about in an exclusive interview this summer. If you missed Part I of our chat, click here for all the latest on new Nissan Stadium and a frank discussion about affordability for the average fan.

This idea of “actions instead of words” is a big deal for the Titans as they work to rebuild carefully and intentionally from the bottom of the league in 2024. So I put Nihill in an impossible situation by asking him to try to explain that idea… well, in words:

“I think it’s subtle. This offseason in particular, the work that Chad (Brinker), Mike (Borgonzi), Brian (Callahan), and the rest of the team have been doing… It’s hard work to come off of a three win season and to do this kind of honest evaluation of where the team’s at, and ultimately cast this vision of where it needs to go. I do think there probably would have been past versions of this organization that would have done a lot of radio shows and interviews that would be talking very optimistically about this year, what’s going to happen… I think there was this kind of hunker-down mentality.”

Nihill didn’t shy away from sharing his long-term grand vision for this team, though. And it seems to be more than the obligatory “pursuit of excellence” shtick to him based on the amount of planning and action that’s already taken place.

“This is going to be a Mount Rushmore organization in the National Football League. There’s a determination, there’s a plan, there’s an intelligence that’s going into this. We’re gonna do that work, and we’re gonna spend our time doing that work instead of messaging to our fans ‘you need to believe in us’. I think our fans actually just want this organization to be great, which is the same thing as the football side of the organization, Amy, all of us want, and it has been really inspiring watching them do exactly as they said they were going to do.”

Of course, we all know that the best organizations in the sport largely do this. So trying your best to embody them is a great place to start. Legendary NFL GM Ron Wolf’s Packers were this way when they rose from the league’s ash heap to become a Mount Rushmore franchise themselves. It’s hardly surprising President of Football Operations Chad Brinker is trying to reflect many parts of that franchise where he cut his teeth in the Ron Wolf school of team building.

“I’m certainly personally inspired that as you keep stacking these opportunities to add to the roster within that discipline, when you study the great organizations in football, they have that level of discipline. They know what their team is, they know what their philosophies are, and they have the discipline to execute on it. And I think that we have that too, but you’re not going to probably see Chad and Mike and Brian up front being like, ‘Hey, we’re doing great stuff!’ This has been a remarkable draft class because we did that kind of disciplined, hard work. And we’re just going to keep our heads down, determined to keep doing that work.”

The uncomfortable reality is that the Titans are in the “before” picture of this journey today. The weight loss infomercial hasn’t revealed the “trim new you” just yet. But one of the keys to high-level success in life is becoming comfortable with discomfort. And the encouraging thing about the state of this regime is that they’re not deluding themselves on where they’re at. I can’t say for sure that they’ll be the ones to take this team to where it wants to go, but I can say that they’re making no qualms about where they are today: in the “before” picture.

I suppose it’s hard for anybody to deny that, when you find yourself picking first overall in the NFL draft. And the way last year ended, with the team firmly out of the playoff hunt extremely early, seemingly dysfunctional as ever, with the talk focused on losing out to secure draft position down the stretch; well, that’s either a wake up call for an organization, or you’re just an uncompetitive ball club.

Nihill agreed. Last season was, in fact, “a wake up call… everyone in this organization needs to wake up in the morning and every time they enter their key code, they need to understand this privilege and this responsibility, and the stewardship to this city and to these fans. And that is the kind of charge that I’m feeling.”

I asked Nihill to expand on that charge he’s felt:

“There’s a strong charge in the building that I have felt every single day since last season. I think part of what I’m feeling is this sense of unity throughout the building about that. The connection point most directly is Chad and me in terms of the leadership, right? We talk just about every day, he may be giving me updates, I may be giving him updates, but there is this sense of ‘how can I help? What do you need?’ So you say we’re talking about the stadium, that’s just a fan thing, yeah? Well, not really. We spent so much time saying ‘what if we were the most player-centric organization in the NFL, and we’ve got a blank canvas on a building here, what would we do?’ And so we splurged on digging out underground parking for the players so that they could take just a couple steps from their cars to get into the locker room. We put between a 50-to-100% size increase into locker rooms and training areas. We added hydrotherapy tubs. We put a lot of thought into the family room, and then ended up adding another family room.”

If absolutely nothing else, it sounds like this is a team that’s working hard to crush the annual NFLPA grades.

The brutal negative emotions associated with last season—how everybody felt after January’s painful yet merciful end to a 3-14 season—is clearly the primary catalyst for the mindset shift in the Titans building. But Nihill emphasized that it’s more than that: it’s about taking advantage of a rare moment.

“How many moments does an organization have to get a fresh look from a market, from a fan base? Both on the field and off the field, we’re kind of in a moment, aren’t we? Off the field is easier to explain. You’ve got a new stadium coming online. That’s a pretty big deal. Every fan who comes through the building is going to have a new experience, and we have a new opportunity to show them who we are, the character, the soul of the team, our connection to Nashville, how much we care about them. And then on the field, when you have three wins, it’s a reset opportunity, right? And so combining these two moments, we’re trying to really be awake to the fact that this is something that we’ll look back on. We can take this opportunity and define the future of this organization, in both the short term and the long term. And I’m inspired by the 2025 version of us, and the 2026 version and on and on. But what about the 2035, the 2036, the 2037 versions too? I don’t see why this can’t be the first step to putting the Titans on the map.”

This is of course where Brinker, Borgonzi, and Callahan come into the picture. The business side of the operation can do so many things better, but they can’t win football games.

“We got to build a killer jet plane. The football team has to fill it with jet fuel by winning games, right? You can build a great jet plane, and if you don’t win games, it’s probably not going to soar the way you want it to. But I believe in my bones that that’s exactly what they’re doing for sustainable success. There are a thousand things throughout this organization where we’re working to build this beautiful plane and be the franchise our fans deserve.”

With Cam Ward at the helm and an incredible new stadium nearly here, the hope is that this moment for both the football and the business sides of this franchise doesn’t go to waste. It won’t be for lack of trying.