Titans Cycle Through 5 Leaders In 34 Months With NFL’s Worst Record Since 1986

In January 2025, owner Amy Adams Strunk reshaped the front office after firing GM Ran Carthon, with Brinker leading the search that produced Mike Borgonzi as the new general manager. Borgonzi was granted final authority over the 53-man roster. Brinker’s title stayed the same. His power didn’t. He shifted toward salary cap management, analytics, and research. A further restructure before Saleh’s January 2026 hire made both Borgonzi and Brinker report directly to Strunk, where previously only Brinker had. On paper, clarity. In practice, a countdown. The restructure stripped Brinker of the personnel work he’d spent 13 years mastering in Green Bay. Months later, he walked.

By The Numbers

A quick scoreboard on the dysfunction. Five major leadership departures have happened since December 2022. The 19-49 four-year record is the worst for the franchise since the 1983-1986 Oilers went 15-49. Brian Callahan finished 4-19 as head coach. The Titans opened 2025 with a 1-5 start before Callahan was fired in October. Tennessee has finished last in the AFC South three seasons in a row. Brinker himself spent 13 years in Green Bay before arriving in Nashville.

A Franchise Fans Can’t Recognize

Four consecutive losing seasons. Last place in the AFC South three years running. The Titans used the first overall pick in 2025 on Cam Ward, the first No. 1 overall selection the franchise has actually made since Earl Campbell in 1978. Tennessee owned the top pick in 2016 but traded it to the Rams rather than using it. Ward’s debut season under Callahan produced a 1-5 start before the head coach was fired. Callahan finished 4-19 as head coach. Tennessee fans watched a franchise invest the ultimate draft asset and still finish at the bottom of the division. The roster kept changing. The results kept compounding. And the front office kept burning through the people supposedly in charge of fixing it.

The Business of Instability

Repeated executive turnover doesn’t just lose games. It poisons organizational continuity. Every new GM inherits a roster built by someone else’s philosophy. Every new coach installs a system the players weren’t drafted for. Scouting departments realign. Player development programs restart. The Titans have operated under multiple front office structures in barely over a year, each one promising stability while producing the opposite. Coaching candidates and free agents notice. When your franchise cycles through leaders faster than most teams cycle through offensive coordinators, the talent pool starts avoiding your calls.

How Tennessee’s Churn Compares Across the NFL

Most franchises measure continuity in decades rather than months. Green Bay, where Brinker spent 13 years, operated under a single general manager across his entire tenure there. Pittsburgh has employed only three head coaches since 1969. Even rebuilding franchises typically give a general manager three full drafts before pulling the plug on the plan. Tennessee’s inability to let any structure reach a second offseason is the outlier, not the norm. That is the single clearest reason executives around the league now treat Nashville as a career risk rather than a career opportunity.

He Hired His Own Replacement

Here’s the part that should unsettle anyone who has ever built something at work. Brinker led the GM search that produced Borgonzi. He championed the hire. He believed bringing in a strong general manager would stabilize the franchise. Instead, the hire eventually displaced him. Borgonzi took roster control. Brinker got analytics. The man who designed the solution became expendable to the solution. That pattern reaches beyond football. Any executive who empowers a subordinate without securing their own authority is building the structure that removes them.

The Owner Is the Constant Variable

Five leadership changes. Multiple restructures framed as fixes. One constant: Amy Adams Strunk retains final authority on all major decisions, including coaching hires, even as she publicly delegates. Each restructure announces clarity. Each restructure produces the next departure. Robinson gone. Carthon gone. Vrabel gone. Callahan gone. Brinker gone. The executives change. The owner stays. The record stays bad. That’s the mechanism connecting every ripple in this story. The dysfunction doesn’t originate in the front office. It originates above it, and no restructure can fix what the restructure is designed to protect.

The Words That Said Everything

Brinker’s resignation statement carried a line worth reading twice: “As I’ve spent less time in personnel, I have a renewed conviction that it is time to return to what I love and move towards my next chapter.” That’s a man telling you his power was taken. He spent 13 years in Green Bay doing personnel work. The Titans promoted him, then moved him away from the thing he was hired to do. Strunk accepted his departure without hesitation. Exceptional track record, expendable role. That contradiction tells the whole story.

A Reputation Spreading Across the League

Sports Business Journal reporting has characterized Strunk’s leadership as having turned the Titans into one of the worst-regarded ownership situations in professional sports. That label carries structural consequences. Future GM candidates will demand ironclad authority guarantees before accepting a Tennessee offer. Coaching candidates will negotiate shorter contracts with larger buyouts. The Titans had already hired Robert Saleh as head coach months earlier, in January 2026. Saleh walked into a franchise where the last coach lasted barely a season. The precedent is already set for his tenure.

What Saleh Actually Inherits

Saleh, the former San Francisco defensive coordinator and New York Jets head coach, takes over a defense that ranked near the bottom of the league in 2025 and a roster now partly assembled by three different regimes. His hire was finalized the week of January 19, 2026, months before Brinker’s exit. Saleh’s reputation is built on defensive structure and locker room culture, two things a franchise averaging a leadership change every eight months cannot easily sustain. He also inherits Cam Ward, the same player the previous staff was fired trying to develop.

The Cam Ward Problem

Ward was drafted first overall in April 2025 to become a franchise quarterback. Instead, he is entering Year 2 with his second head coach, a new offensive system, and a front office overhaul above him. NFL research has consistently shown that rookie quarterbacks who change coordinators or head coaches in their first three seasons develop at materially lower rates than those kept in stable systems. The Titans’ instability is now a direct threat to the most valuable asset the franchise owns, and the one Strunk cannot afford to waste.

Who Wins, Who Loses, Who’s Next

Brinker will land somewhere. A 13-year Packers veteran with GM search experience has value across the league. The losers are Borgonzi and Saleh, who now carry the full weight of a franchise that has destroyed every executive it has touched since 2022. Borgonzi becomes the most vulnerable man in Nashville if the Titans don’t win immediately. Saleh enters knowing Tennessee coaching tenures run about a season under this ownership. The irony is that Brinker, by leaving, may have made the smartest career move of anyone currently associated with the franchise.

The 2026 Schedule Sets the Trap

The Titans are projected to play one of the easier schedules in the NFL in 2026 based on 2025 opponent records. That is the trap. A soft schedule sets expectations. If Tennessee doesn’t convert weak opponents into wins, the narrative hardens quickly. The roster stops being the issue. The structure becomes the story. Every loss against a bottom-tier team in September and October will feed the same conclusion Brinker just exited, that no one below the owner can fix what the owner refuses to change.

The Cycle Has No Off Switch

The Titans could break this pattern. Strunk could publicly commit to a multi-year timeline for Borgonzi and Saleh. But the track record suggests otherwise. If Tennessee starts 2026 losing, the pressure builds by October. Borgonzi becomes the scapegoat for the “wrong coach hire.” Another restructure follows. Another executive enters the system believing they can fix it. The 19-49 record didn’t happen because of bad executives. It happened because no executive survives long enough to build anything. Understanding that pattern is the difference between watching this franchise and actually seeing it.

Titans fans, is this on Amy Adams Strunk, or does Borgonzi still deserve a real shot? Sound off in the comments.

Sources:
Tennessee Titans, “Titans President of Football Operations Chad Brinker Steps Down,” TennesseeTitans.com, April 28, 2026.
ESPN, “Chad Brinker steps down as Titans’ football operations chief,” April 28, 2026.
Front Office Sports, “Titans’ Post-Vrabel Shake-Up Continues With Chad Brinker’s Exit,” April 28, 2026.
Sports Business Journal, “Titans change front office structure ahead of coaching search,” January 3, 2026.
Paul Kuharsky, “Titans’ Pattern of Shifting Power on Display Again with Chad Brinker Exit,” PaulKuharsky.com, April 27, 2026.
Wikipedia, “2025 Tennessee Titans season,” accessed April 2026.