Unfortunately, Simmons found himself in the opposite situation. While he expressed appreciation for Brian Callahan as a person, the four-time Pro Bowler admitted the culture in Nashville declined following Vrabel’s departure. Instead of rallying around a determined leader, the Titans wandered in the abyss without much of a direction or sense of accountability.
“When you look at it from a player’s standpoint, it’s like, ‘What is really our identity?'” he explained. “I feel like as a team, that was something I was trying to help find. Because later in the season, we started running the football. It was like ‘Damn, why couldn’t we do this earlier in the season?’ I feel like that should’ve been our identity to start off with to help a young quarterback, which is no knock on the coaches or whatever, but I feel like going forward, it all starts with the foundation. It’s just like building a house: If your foundation’s not there and not good, you’ve got a s—ty house.
“When Callahan first got in — and it’s no knock to Cally, Cally’s a great guy, great coach — I don’t think it was just the time for that. Going from Vrabel, we all knew what it looked like. The guys who’ve been there, me, Hook (safety Amani Hooker), we knew what it looked like to not let things slip. The first maybe year or so that we’re going through the coaching change, you guys saw the roster. We’ve got maybe six, seven rookies playing at one time or at one point in the season. So when you have such a young team, what can you really fall back on? Who are the Tennessee Titans? What do we really stand for? We didn’t have that.
“We knew what Vrabel expected. I was telling guys, like, the first day of meetings … I get there and I see guys running around looking for notebooks and pencils. Vrabel, the last year that he was here … everybody coming in with notebooks and pencils. And he was like, ‘What are you guys ready to write down? I’m not gonna talk about nothing right now.’ We knew what Vrabel expected and we knew what he wanted out of the team. The message was in the locker room and it’s like this past year, we didn’t have that.”
