Longtime Tennessee Titans stalwart Mike Munchak was fired after the Titans went 7-9 and missed the playoffs in 2013. So, for the first time in a long (looooong) time, the Titans steered the ship in a completely different direction from the Jeff Fisher era. Instead, they wanted someone who would fix the offense and even REVOLUTIONIZE it. They hired Ken Whisenhunt.
He was credited with being one of the key architects of the Pittsburgh Steelers Super Bowl-winning offense in 2005. There, he served as offensive coordinator to Ben Roethlisberger and company. In 2007, he was hired for his first head coaching gig with the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals went to the Super Bowl in 2008, but came up short against the Steelers. Whisenhunt always received a lot of praise for that run, but rumors swirled that that had more to do with Kurt Warner than Whisenhunt’s offensive prowess. Supposedly, Warner would flat out reject Whisenhunt’s calls. Players didn’t like Whisenhunt, either. Again, it’s all just speculation, but there’s an awful lot of smoke for there not to have been any fire. Not to mention, once Warner retired, Whisenhunt’s Cardinals teams were awful.
Outside of 9-7 in 2008 and 10-6 in 2009, the Cardinals went 8-8 twice and 5-11 twice under Whisenhunt. Once Warner retired, there was a revolving door at quarterback, and the Cardinals organization just couldn’t get it sorted out.
For these reasons, I was never really high on the Whisenhunt hire in Tennessee. Ruston Webster and Tommy Smith gave Whisenhunt a chance, in part, because they were hoping to reinvigorate the offense and catch it up to modern standards. I think they, like many others, gave him too much credit for the success of the Steelers and Cardinals. Easy to say in hindsight, I know, but while everyone else was claiming this was a championship move for the Titans, I was skeptical from the jump.
What ensued was undoubtedly the darkest days of Titans football in the franchise’s history. That 2014 Titans team was, and in my opinion still is, the absolute worst Titans team to ever take the field. Where Whisenhunt could at least cling to mediocrity in Arizona, he was exposed as most definitely NOT the miracle worker he was hired to be in Tennessee.
The Titans went 2-14 in 2014 – 4th in the AFC South, 16th in the AFC, and 31st in the entire NFL (though they tied the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for that mark). Not a single Pro Bowler on that roster, either. It was atrocious football – the worst we’ve ever seen in Nashville. To call Whisenhunt’s tenure with the Titans anything other than disastrous would be a lie.
After starting 2015 1-6, the Titans canned his ass and hired Mike Mularkey as the interim head coach.
Looking back at it, such an awful hire coming at such a critical time in franchise history (the drafting of Marcus Mariota in 2015) looks like a huge setback to the franchise. You can’t help but wonder what Mariota’s development would’ve looked like with a different hire (the guy I was banging the drum for back then was Mike Zimmer – what would the Titans have looked like had they managed to woo him instead of Whisenhunt?) Thankfully, owner Amy Adams Strunk, current general manager Jon Robinson, and head coach Mike Vrabel seem to have stabilized the organization for now.
So, the next time you feel like complaining about this organization not getting over the hump, I’d encourage you to go back and watch some Whisenhunt-era Titans football. Remember, it could always be much, much worse.
Whisenhunt’s career coaching record currently sits at:
- Arizona Cardinals: 45-51 (.469%)
- Tennessee Titans: 3-20 (.103%)
- Career: 48-71 (.403%)
Who knows whether or not Whisenhunt will ever get another crack at a head coaching gig? I tend to think he’s proven that he is what he is – a solid coordinator when he has a good quarterback, but a terrible head coach. It was rumored back in December that he might take the head coaching job at Georgia Tech, but alas, he never did.
TENNESSEE TITANS THROWBACK THURSDAY ARCHIVES
Drew Bennett
Keith Bulluck
Eddie George
Lavelle Hawkins
Albert Haynesworth
Chris Henry
Chris Hope
Brandon Jones
Derrick Mason
Steve McNair
Samari Rolle
Alterraun Verner
LenDale White
Vince Young
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD and #BeBetter. “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Alabama Crimson Tide football, the WWE, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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