Why Mike Mularkey's plausibility presents a problem for Tennessee Titans | Estes

Titans head coach Mike Mularkey watches the team during the first half at University of Phoenix Stadium Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017 in Glendale, Ariz.
Titans head coach Mike Mularkey watches the team during the first half at University of Phoenix Stadium Sunday, Dec. 10, 2017 in Glendale, Ariz.
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Former Tennessee Titans coach Mike Mularkey couldn’t have sounded more convincing.

He had no reason to lie – or to even bring up the incident at all.

You could tell it bothered him. He called it his biggest professional regret.

“I still regret it,” he said.

In a 2020 appearance on the relatively obscure “Steelers Realm” podcast that had gone undetected until this week, Mularkey made waves and accusations. He described how the Titans’ ownership – meaning “Amy Adams Strunk and her family” – told him he was going to be named head coach in 2016 before the team completed interviews to adhere to the NFL’s Rooney Rule, which is in place to give minority candidates a fair shot in hiring processes.

“So I sat there knowing I was the head coach in ’16 as they went through this fake hiring process,” Mularkey said, “knowing a lot of the coaches that they were interviewing, knowing how much they prepared to go through those interviews, knowing that (they are doing) everything they could do and they have no chance of getting that job.”

A lot to digest there.

I was still chewing on it when I received an email that essentially called Mularkey a liar for saying what he did. Per an unnamed statement issued Thursday on behalf of the Titans: “No decision was made, and no decision was communicated, prior to the completion of all interviews" in the 2016 search.

Someone wasn’t telling the truth, and I had a strong hunch that it was the side unwilling to attach a person’s name to its words.

It’s nearly impossible to prove that, though. The Titans know it. So does the NFL.

And that’s why Brian Flores’ lawsuit that former Titans defensive coordinator Ray Horton has joined – his case bolstered by Mularkey’s podcast interview – remains unlikely to succeed legally.

At the same time, the lawsuit seems to be accomplishing what was intended by shedding light on shady hiring practices that football’s minority coaches have been criticizing behind the scenes and living through for years.

Flores, I believe, isn’t doing this for money but for principle. When that’s the motivation, the goal isn't some out-of-court settlement. There’s no reason to think this will go away quietly for the NFL – and now, too, for the Titans, who are in an uncomfortable position as a franchise singled out for allegedly circumventing the Rooney Rule.

Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk gets a hug from Tennessee Titans running back Jeremy McNichols (28) as they get ready to face the Arizona Cardinals at Nissan Stadium Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021 in Nashville, Tenn.
Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk gets a hug from Tennessee Titans running back Jeremy McNichols (28) as they get ready to face the Arizona Cardinals at Nissan Stadium Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021 in Nashville, Tenn.

We’re left to decide how disgusted we should be by that fact, even if it feels a bit disingenuous to do it so retroactively.

Disclaimer: I wasn’t working in Nashville in 2016. From what I can tell, though, it was hardly a secret that interim coach Mularkey was going to get the job before he did. Examples are plentiful.

Among them, Paul Kukarsky wrote for ESPN.com at the time the hire was announced, "All indications since the season ended were that ownership had a preference for Mularkey as the full-time head coach.”

John Glennon wrote in The Tennessean, “It was clear in the days immediately after the season that the Titans had an interest in retaining Mularkey. But even so, didn’t controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk and team president Steve Underwood still owe it to the organization and the fans to conduct a broad search for a new coach and open themselves to other possibilities?"

Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio took it even further at the time, bashing the Titans' hiring process as “a sham."

“It wasn’t a real search,” Florio wrote. “It was a hollow, we’re-going-through-the-motions-because-we-have-to coronation of Mularkey.”

To those who’d feign outrage now, I might ask where that energy was six years ago.

Mularkey’s account seems plausible, but as he lamented, he didn’t raise an objection at the time, either. It’s difficult to apply such a high standard. Would you have said something and risked getting a job you deeply coveted? Would anyone?

A rule of history so often demonstrated is that past deeds often do look like misdeeds when viewed in a present context. This isn't right, but it's true: If the Titans were accused of something like this in 2022, it’d be much more outrageous than it was in 2016.

That shows how much Flores' lawsuit is working after all. As for the Titans, I'm not sure there's a penalty the franchise is facing here that's worse than the bad look of being on the wrong side of such progress.

And if you're on the wrong side of progress, it's best to not linger there.

If in 2016, the Titans should have known better, in 2022, they'd have been better off acknowledging that and moving on.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on Twitter @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Mike Mularkey's plausibility presents a problem for Tennessee Titans