There was a period of time where I truly believed that the Tennessee Titans organization under controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk was capable of winning a Super Bowl. At the end of the 2024 season, they feel like a completely unserious, directionless franchise.
Players, coaches, and the front office all share some level of blame. This embarrassment of a year, however, is primarily ownership's fault.
Amy Adams Strunk's decisions are at the core of the Titans failures
On Sunday, in her beloved Houston Oilers throwback uniforms, Strunk's sad 3-14 football team lost a game 23-14 at home in the rain to the AFC South division-winning Texans (10-7).
You know, that team whose ownership likes to mock her and that she enjoys beating the most? A few brave fans showed up to brave the elements genuinely wanting their team to win a game and end this wretched year on a high note. Those loyal people fooled themselves into thinking that winning still matters more than anything here.
Most fans, smartly, did not attend this final debacle at Nissan Stadium.
Instead, they celebrated this most recent humiliation on social media or watching on TVs in the concourse as the New England Patriots beat the Buffalo Bills. Why? The precious No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft had been secured, of course and the Titans could officially declare themselves to be the very best at losing.
Amy Adams Strunk's desire to have a more controllable environment with less conflict and constructive disagreement has turned her franchise into a laughing stock.
Amy Adams Strunk should no longer get the benefit of the doubt as Titans owner
She has regularly made declarative statements on supporting figures she employs like former coaches Mike Mularkey, Mike Vrabel and general manager Jon Robinson.
Soon thereafter, Strunk reversed field and picked them off one by one. She may decide to do that again with the nebulous front office structure she's built where general manager Ran Carthon was retained and promoted to Executive Vice President while simultaneously giving former assistant GM Chad Brinker the title of President of Football Operations above him.
It is incredibly difficult to have trust in a team's direction when you cannot take the owner at her word.
Will she keep Brinker and fire the Carthon? Will she keep both? How many people internally are jockeying for her favor hoping that they can come out cleanly in the Russian Roulette cycle a job with the Titans seems to be?
Strunk alone can answer that question.
What makes it all the more unfortunate is how quickly she's allowed the thing that she helped build back up into NFL relevancy has cratered under her new vision. Strunk has done many good things since taking the reigns as controlling owner in 2015. It won't matter if she's not capable of sustaining them.
Titans have a golden opportunity to clean house, but will it fix the real issue?
This 3-14 season is the perfect storm with the upselling around the new $2.2 billion stadium.
She's hired Carthon, Brinker, team president Burke Nihill and first-year coach Brian Callahan. All seem to be decent people, but have categorically failed at their collective jobs. Their job isn't to win press conferences, it is to prioritize the product on the field. Sunday was just the latest reminder of how far away they've gotten from the most important thing.
Callahan was asked after losing to Houston if there was any relief in this miserable season coming to an end.
"No, there's no relief to it," Callahan said. "I'm ready for a bit of a break if we're being honest, but not relief. I've enjoyed the process. I think it's been a long journey from the time I got hired till now. There's a lot of things that I've learned and hopefully a lot of things to improve on, obviously. But no, I don't sense any relief in it. I've actually very much enjoyed the season and the process. But a lot of things that got to get better and I could definitely use a bit of a break though."
Understanding the toll it takes on anyone in these jobs, it was a difficult sentiment to come to terms with.
A season filled with this many loses is exhausting, yes. That fatigue, however, pales in comparison to the strain it takes to win regularly in the National Football League. For the Titans in 2024, losing was too easy.
Damned if they didn't all collaborate to get to this point.
Strunk gets to make whatever decisions she'd like. It's her team, after all. True reflection is required by her as we enter another offseason. Do you want people that you can control, or are you willing to have legitimate patience and take the feedback of the people you employ in their various roles? We all need to have pushback in our jobs, no matter how much we might dislike people pointing out when we're wrong.
Most importantly, mean what you say.
Disagreement is essential for legitimate growth, especially when trying to achieve the ultimate goal of winning a franchise's first Super Bowl. Landing the No. 1 overall pick should not be treated as any form of success, even if its the best possible outcome for a team this awful. There's no guaranteeing that an organization gets the pick, or whatever leverage it provides right. Certainly this organization has not earned the trust of anyone that it will handle what comes next correctly.
I do not doubt that Strunk wants to win, but there must be some recognition that she, alone, cannot get them to the heights that they seek.
Pride and ego are easy to find at any level of business. What is difficult to nail down is good leadership. We see it every day in our respective places of work, in our politics and in the world of sports. Strunk has shown that she's capable of being that guiding force, but shouldn't be granted benefit of the doubt moving forward.
Robinson was a good general manager, too, for four offseasons. Then he lit the franchises future on fire with three consecutive disaster drafts coupled with trading away receiver A.J. Brown to the Philadelphia Eagles. That nightmare trade, by the way, is one Strunk signed off on herself. Strunk has been a good owner, but now has fallen well short of her own stated standards.
But, hey, how about those cool Oilers uniforms!
