Mike Vrabel's Titans job is probably safe, but with Amy Adams Strunk, how do you know? | Estes

Losing looks bad on any coach. Worse when it’s Mike Vrabel.

Lately, at press conferences, the Tennessee Titans' coach has seemed like a famous fashion designer standing up there in a cheap, lumpy, ill-fitting suit. He’s saying, naturally, that it’s just a matter of a few alterations. But we all know it's still an ugly suit. And he'd know that better than anyone else in the room.

And the longer Vrabel is made to wear it, the more you wonder how much it’ll wear on him.

Vrabel is approaching the toughest exam he's taken as an NFL coach. The rest of this season will show whether he has the coaching chops to improve and inspire a struggling team without the postseason carrots of previous seasons. Seven games to go, and they’ll be mostly about pride.

Either Vrabel irons out a respectable finish, or he doesn’t and it keeps going as it has been.

If the wheels fall off completely, what happens then?

Does Vrabel get traded to his buddy Robert Kraft in New England? Is he fired by owner Amy Adams Strunk? Or maybe he just chooses to walk and leave an extensive rebuild for someone else?

These were all such silly questions until recently. Now they are growing more pertinent by the week.

Is Mike Vrabel on the hot seat?

Vrabel’s job security with the Titans is being questioned like never before.

He spoke about it after the Titans dropped to 3-7 with Sunday’s not-as-close-the-final-score-suggested 34-14 beatdown by the rival Jacksonville Jaguars. Then in an uncomfortable Monday press conference in Nashville, the reporters on hand asked – in so many words – about potential changes to his approach and potential firings on his coaching staff. Vrabel was even asked at one point to offer examples of how he knows that his message is still resonating with the team.

“Are you questioning my control of the locker room?” Vrabel replied.

For the record, Vrabel said he didn’t think that was an issue. His examples? “The same ones that I've had since I got here. I don't know how to do it any other way.”

He, too, defended his assistant coaches, saying he wasn’t considering changes while seemingly shifting responsibility toward the players: “I know what we're coaching. I know what we're teaching. I never blamed Dean Pees or Matt Patricia or Bill Belichick or Romeo Crennel or Rob Ryan when I couldn't get to the (quarterback) or I missed a tackle or I went the wrong way.”

Took Vrabel about 27 minutes on Monday to finally tell reporters the answer I was waiting to hear from him: “The performance and the coaching, it all falls on me, and I'm excited to get it fixed.”

REQUIRED READING: Azeez Al-Shaair, the Titans' 'unconquerable soul,' no longer has to be 'invisible'

Vrabel has a lot of work to do. But he's a uniquely respected coach.

He's being rumored nationally as a candidate to be traded for other jobs – if you’ve not heard, Kraft is evidently a big fan – while at the same time, sports-talk hosts locally debate whether he should be fired. Who else, really?

At this point, I don’t envision either of those eventualities happening – Vrabel being traded or fired – unless he simply didn't want to coach the Titans any longer.

But my expectations don’t mean much with a lot of the season remaining. Let's see what happens.

The Titans, actually, are unbeaten at Nissan Stadium. That’s where five of those final seven games will be played. They must win more than a few to feel good about the direction. And any coach – even Vrabel – needs to have everyone feeling good about the direction to be secure in his job.

Would Amy Adams Strunk fire Mike Vrabel? Never say never

Adams Strunk can be a wildcard. Has been before. She hardly ever speaks her mind publicly. Most NFL media types only get glimpses of what she’s thinking via third-hand sources.

Were she to fire Vrabel this season, much of the league would think she was crazy.

Not like that matters. The same people thought she was crazy when she fired former general manager Jon Robinson during last season with the Titans pointed toward the playoffs for a fourth year in a row. They also thought Robinson was crazy when he traded superstar receiver A.J. Brown to the Philadelphia Eagles during the 2022 NFL Draft.

An examination of where these Titans went astray has to start with those two missteps: Trading Brown and not waiting until the end of the season to fire Robinson.

But there have been a lot of personnel blunders to put the Titans at this low point. So many that, frankly, we should have seen it coming. The franchise has been cycling down naturally, given the ages of cornerstone players, while getting far too many personnel decisions wrong, both in free agency and, costliest of all, a couple of atrocious draft classes under Robinson.

Wasn’t Vrabel’s fault then. What could be his problem now, however, is that someone else was already fired for those missteps.

Estes: How Kevin Byard feels about that Titans trade – and the Super Bowl he's chasing

Previously: The Titans aren't a confident team, and that starts with Mike Vrabel | Estes

When a pro sports team struggles, the debate becomes one of talent versus coaching. Either the roster isn’t good enough or the coach isn’t getting enough out of that roster.

In firing Robinson, Adams Strunk made her decision. She backed Vrabel and added to his plate.

Vrabel then helped find a new GM in Ran Carthon who said on Day 1 that he’d have to “collaborate” with his coach on decisions. It can get tricky when a coach – especially one like Vrabel whose success had been more about buy-in than sheer talent – starts swimming in the management pool and a franchise is nearing a roster reconstruction.

Teammates reading reports of rumors since last season about Ryan Tannehill or Derrick Henry or Kevin Byard or whoever else getting traded, and then Byard actually was traded. Was that Carthon? Or was it really Vrabel pulling the strings? How do players know?

So far, the only thing that has been clear about this “collaboration” era for the Titans is that it has been a failure on the field.

If you take the NFL’s offensive and defensive stats for scoring and passing, rushing and total yards, the Titans don’t rank in the top half of the league in any of those eight categories. Basically means there’s nothing outside of special teams in which these Titans are above average – with Henry, DeAndre Hopkins and Jeffery Simmons available and playing.

Any head coach should be held accountable for such a disheveled mess.

Even if it’s Mike Vrabel.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Will Titans fire Mike Vrabel? With Amy Adams Strunk, you never know