NFL should emulate what Mike Vrabel, Tennessee Titans are doing with Terrell Williams | Estes

Sometimes there’s no ulterior motive. Sometimes great ideas are just that. Sometimes they are spawned out of care and support for one another, rather than self-interest or grandstanding.

I’m choosing to believe that was the case here.

I think Mike Vrabel’s unorthodox decision to step aside for Saturday’s preseason game against the Bears in Chicago and make defensive line coach Terrell Williams the Tennessee Titans’ acting head coach wasn’t anything other than a reward for someone he knew deserved it.

After Thursday’s Titans practice, Williams — not Vrabel — went behind the podium and comfortably fielded questions from the media as if he had been a head coach for years.

“He had this in mind months ago,” Williams said of Vrabel. “He told me, ‘You can’t get experience being a coordinator without being a coordinator, and you can’t get experience being a head coach without being a head coach, so here you go.’ . . . I believe and I hope that more teams will follow suit and do this, just to give guys experience.”

Usually, when an assistant coach is abruptly thrust into such a role, it’s awkward. That’s because something bad has just happened to the head coach — a suspension or a firing or worse — to force that assistant into an interim role.

This was different. It was nice. For 48 hours, Williams gets to run the show, and Saturday’s result won’t matter as much as what the spotlight and opportunity could mean for his career.

Williams, 49, is in his 26th season of coaching and 12th in the pros, and he wants to be a head coach one day.

You’d like to think it could happen naturally for him, but that’d be giving the NFL more credit than it deserves. The league has a notoriously awful track record with diversity in head-coaching hires. We see it each offseason, and though much gets said, very little — the Rooney Rule, while well-meaning, has been largely ineffective — is ever done by franchises to improve it.

Vrabel just did something.

Yet I don’t think that’s really why he did it.

During Vrabel’s Titans tenure, their best position group has consistently been the defensive line. Even in 2022, when they went 7-10, they still had the top-rated run defense in the NFL. Players keep improving under Williams: Average becomes good, and good becomes great.

Look at Jeffery Simmons or Denico Autry or Teair Tart or a relatively obscure former player like DeMarcus Walker. This past offseason, Walker parlayed one productive season with the Titans into a three-year, $21 million contract from the Bears, who guaranteed him $16 million (per ESPN).

Vrabel is alerting the rest of the league to this. He believes he has a future head coach on his staff in Williams, who as a D-line coach and not a coordinator likely would be otherwise overlooked.

“My intent was to do what was best for (Williams) in this situation. It wasn't to send any sort of message,” Vrabel said. “I did what I thought was best for him and for us at this particular time. That's what I wanted to do. It's well-deserved. It's earned.”

Important to note here that Vrabel is still going to be at Saturday’s game. I sincerely doubt he’ll be handing out towels. Fairly sure that if he wants to say or do something during these 48 hours, he won’t mute or dilute his thoughts to adhere to a role reversal.

That’s just Vrabel. He’s the biggest personality in most rooms. He can be prickly and ornery and a smart aleck and is known to be highly demanding of his players and staff.

Every so often, though, you get a glimmer of insight into why the Titans have routinely overachieved on his watch. It’s why NFL players — grown, well-paid individuals — have so often competed as though they’d lie down in traffic if Vrabel desired.

“I don’t know of any teams that are doing what we’re doing here right now,” Williams said, “where you’re taking over (as head coach). You’re meeting with the media. You’re doing all of these different things. Mike Vrabel deserves lot of credit . . . This guy, I’ll do anything for Mike Vrabel, before being put in this position. And there’s really one reason. I know that this guy cares about my family.”

This was such a brilliant idea that other NFL head coaches should be kicking themselves for not thinking of it — and you can be sure they’ll want to emulate it. Williams won’t be the last assistant coach to be made head coach for a preseason game.

He’ll be the first, though.

He should be proud of that. Titans fans should, too.

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

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Titans' Mike Vrabel letting assistant coach preseason game