Tennessee Titans general manager Jon Robinson listens to a question during an NFL football news conference Monday, Jan. 15, 2018, in Nashville, Tenn. The Titans split with head coach Mike Mularkey on Monday after he revived a team with the NFL's worst record over two seasons and led them to their first playoff victory in 14 years. The Titans announced the move two days after a 35-14 loss to New England in the AFC divisional round. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)When the Tennessee Titans made their annual caravan stop in Chattanooga last May, Blake Belcher was the first person in line.
A 25-year-old victim of both cerebral palsy and cancer, Belcher became the lead in this newspaper's caravan story, that story soon to catch the attention of Titans coach Mike Mularkey.
Within a few days, Mularkey extended an invitation to Belcher to visit the Titans twice during the preseason. He posed for pictures with the Belcher family, made sure quarterback Marcus Mariota was available for autographs, as well as other players, then spent private time with the family.
Said a Titans official during one of Belcher's visits: "And (Mularkey) does this kind of thing all the time. He's really great in the community. He really cares about people."
As of Monday morning, all that goodwill became part of the past. Mularkey and the Titans mutually parted ways, presumably over the coach's refusal to fire part of his staff, as was the apparent preference of general manager Jon Robinson and owner Amy Adams Strunk, daughter of the late founder of the Houston Oilers/Titans, Bud Adams.
That, of course, is their right. Especially since Mularkey already was on the staff when Robinson arrived and was basically pushed on the former Tampa Bay and New England employee right after his arrival.
Every pro GM and college athletic director wants to make his own hires regarding head coaches, and Robinson indeed may find a better football mind than Mularkey to lead the Titans. He almost certainly will find a more creative offensive mind, though the fact that the Titans reached the postseason for the first time since 2008 and posted their first playoff win since 2003 probably should have been enough to save Mularkey's job for at least one more season.
But reading the "T" leaves throughout Monday's news blips strongly suggested that either Mariota wasn't happy with the offense, management wasn't happy with the offense or both Mariota and management felt the offense needed a change that Mularkey would be unwilling to accept.
Regardless, Mularkey is out, Robinson is now on the clock and the Titans are about to go to work for their fifth different head coach since the start of the 2010 season.
Don't misunderstand me. On the field - which is how a lot of folks spending large amounts of their hard-earned cash for tickets, parking and concessions judge the team on eight autumn Sundays at Nashville's Nissan Stadium - the Titans haven't been easy to watch for close to a decade.
Their offense is pedestrian at best. For those old enough to remember former Ohio State coaching legend Woody Hayes's "3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust" attack, the Titans have been closer to that than anything to do with the no-huddle.
And if the fan base often was teased that Mariota was going to change all that, it rarely materialized. Either Mariota was injured, or the play-calling was wretched or the talent around Mariota - particularly at wide receiver - just couldn't get the job done.
But whatever the excuse, those who fell in love with the Titans did so for their work ethic, passion and toughness rather than for any scant semblance of creativity. Yet that old-school approach also twice beat Jacksonville this season and the Jaguars will spend this weekend in New England attempting to shock the Patriots in the AFC title game, which would earn them a trip to the Super Bowl.
Beyond that, to watch the past two 9-7 seasons was to see a fundamental soundness in the Titans both on and off the field not witnessed since the Music City Miracle propelled the team on a journey to the 2000 Super Bowl that ended 1 yard short of victory inside the Georgia Dome.
Under Mularkey, this team became a tough out on the field and a together group off it. They conducted coaching clinics at Fort Campbell, visited hospitals, reached out to those who most needed it - among them Belcher from Cleveland, Tenn, and Heather Melton, the widow of James "Sonny" Melton, the Paris, Tenn., nurse who was killed in the Las Vegas shooting that took the lives of 58 people.
That's not to say that those acts of kindness are worth the seven-figure salary Mularkey was earning. Beyond that, the team has a lot more invested in Mariota as the face of the franchise than it has tied up in Mularkey. Maybe Mariota-Mularkey was never an either-or argument, but if it was, the coach always was going to lose.
But this quote from Titans linebacker Derrick Morgan last week, when it looked as if his coach was safe, also bears repeating: "We all know what Mike's meant to this team, how much he's changed the culture here. We're all happy to see ownership backing him. We certainly didn't want to see him go."
But gone he now is, and while the team might find someone better - Robinson is said to covet Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, he of the 11-17 record during his brief stint running the Denver Broncos - odds are, given its frustrating history, that it won't.
And should that happen, should the Titans' next head coach fail to match Mularkey's good work, Strunk's argument that this move was viewed as "an important moment for our football team as we try to make that next step to sustained success on the field" will become just so much more malarkey for a franchise that too often seems to own the patent on it.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.