FanPost

Can I Make A Case For Mike Mularkey?


First off, let me be clear. I don't mean that in the sense of "Everyone is criticizing this, I have a case to make, lend me your eyes", I'm genuinely asking myself if I can take a few minutes on this beautiful Friday morning and see if I can talk myself (and you) into believing that this isn't the worst thing to happen in your life since you realized that your birthday just so happens to be 6 months after your parent's wedding day.

Now, I may not have been quite as surprised as your parents were, but I was still taken back when Mike Mularkey had his interim prefix removed.

And as easy as it was for a vast majority of your family tree to not approve of your parent's situation, an even larger portion of this fan base does not like this Mike Mularkey thing. The path of least resistance is an easy path to take. So instead of giving you dozens of obvious reasons as to why this hire is (will be) a disaster, I'm going to try to be that glass-half-full Uncle that puts his arm around you and tells you that everything is going to be ok. Here goes nothing:

Mike Mularkey Hasn't Exactly Had What You'd Call A Talented Roster At His Disposal:

Let's take a look at Mularkey's starting quarterbacks that he had during his stints with Buffalo and Jacksonville, shall we? Drew Bledsoe (Okay?). His second year at the helm, there was fierce quarterback competition between J.P. Losman & Kelly Holcomb (I mean, "Lol" to that). If my brother wasn't such a huge Bills' fan, I would've thought someone made those 2 names up... And in Jacksonville? Chad Henne & Blaine Gabbert. If we didn't share the division with the Jaguars, we might not even know who they are. - And please don't use Blaine Gabbert's 8 games of semi-decent football with the 49ers this year as some sort of Blaine-Gabberts-not-that-bad point. Please.

To save us the time of going over the rest of his rosters over that 3-year span, it wasn't pretty*. Maurice Jones-Drew only played in 6 games in 2012. Paul Posluszny, Justin Blackmon, Cecil Shorts? Ok..? Buffalo had London Fletcher, Takeo Spikes, Willis McGahee? Not awful talent elsewhere but you can ask a lot of teams in the NFL, all the talent in the world on a roster doesn't mean much without a good quarterback.

(*See 2004, '05 Buffalo Bills/ 2012 Jacksonville Jaguars)

Of course, you can point to a few exceptions but having talent matters for a head coach's success. A talented team can do a lot more for a sub-par head coach than a great coach can do with a sub-par roster.

Now I'm not saying that he's that great coach with no roster, and he doesn't have much more talent to work with currently in Nashville, but before you scream "Look at how awful he was in Buffalo & Jacksonville!", look at those teams and tell me that there are even a few (if any) who could've done more with the amount of time that he had.

I can't really look to much else. His 9 games this year can be thrown out in my opinion. If you want to look at them as further proof that he doesn't deserve this job, then you can, but he did win almost as many games in 9 tries as Ken Whisenhunt did in 23. Does that say anything at all? Probably not.

And I understand that a lot of the frustration stems from how the situation as a whole was handled. But there really isn't much we can do about that either. We won't have much to hold onto there until Steve "The Mustache" Underwood and the rest of the Titans' higher-ups attempt to make a real connection with this fan-base and try to see things through our eyes.

But look... There's silver linings if you're looking for them. I love our new GM, he seems to trust Mike. The players are very open about liking Mularkey, I can't really hate that. We can hate this hire, we can complain, we can let it ruin our offseason. (But at least we didn't hire Chip Kelly)

And really, our only option as fans of this team is to suck it up, realize that this is happening with or without us, and go with it. We're having this baby together, for better or worse.

- I bet you never thought you'd see someone relate a head coaching hire to an unplanned pregnancy. Have a great weekend, my friends.