Tapping Into the Hive Mind
Tennessee’s head coach search has grown into something rather intriguing. While most NFL teams interview around ten candidates, the Titans have requested meetings with nineteen coaches (so far). That’s not just thoroughness. That’s a strategy.
And it’s worth asking: what happens when a data-driven organization sits down with nineteen of football’s brightest minds and asks them many of the same questions about the roster, the rebuild, and how they’d develop Cam Ward? Are they essentially crowdsourcing football intelligence through an unusually large interview pool? Let’s dig into it.
From Last Place to League Leaders
The Titans’ analytics transformation has been dramatic. ESPN’s annual survey ranked them dead last in analytical sophistication in both 2021 and 2022. But after several years under President of Football Operations Chad Brinker, the Titans have received zero votes in the “least analytical” category and recognition as the second-most improved operation in the league.
The Titans’ analytics department now employs five full-time staff led by Sarah Bailey, who brought a Super Bowl ring from the Rams and credentials from MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. The infrastructure around her includes software engineers developing proprietary tools, a Director of Game Management handling in-game optimization, data-layered draft profile development, and liaison staff ensuring data actually reaches the front office, coaches and scouts in usable form.
Brinker’s philosophy has centered on questioning assumptions scouts have accepted for decades. “Does hand size really affect your ability to catch the football?” he asked in October 2024. “At the time we ran it, it didn’t really reveal that was the case.”
When you’re willing to challenge conventional wisdom on hand size, you’re probably thinking creatively about coaching interviews.
A Candidate List That Covers the Map
Fifteen of the nineteen candidates are former NFL head coaches, which means the Titans are essentially surveying the league’s leadership landscape. Collectively, these candidates represent over 5,000 games of NFL coaching experience, with more than 1,500 of those games coming as head coaches alone. That’s roughly 315 combined seasons of professional football knowledge walking through Tennessee’s interview room.
With a spectrum of ages as well, relative newcomers like Chris Shula (39) and Jesse Minter (42) can offer entirely different perspectives from older veteran coaches like John Harbaugh (63) and Mike McCarthy (62).
The search includes notable names such as the aforementioned John Harbaugh, fresh off Baltimore’s decision to end his 18-year run (180 career wins), Mike McCarthy, who won Super Bowl XLV with the Green Bay Packers, Kevin Stefanski, a two-time Coach of the Year, who just parted ways with Cleveland, Mike McDaniel, the offensive innovator recently let go by Miami, Robert Saleh, now coordinating San Francisco’s defense after his stint leading the Jets, and Matt Nagy, the former Bears head coach now serving as Chiefs offensive coordinator under Andy Reid.
But it’s not just the big names. The Titans are talking to coordinators from Kansas City, Los Angeles, Green Bay, and San Francisco. They’re interviewing former head coaches who’ve faced the Titans and current coordinators who’ve schemed against them. The candidate pool represents nearly every strategic philosophy in modern football.
The Interview Room as Information Exchange
NFL coaching interviews aren’t just job interviews. They’re two-way information exchanges. And teams sometimes value the intelligence as much as the candidate evaluation.
FOX Sports in 2025 said about one coordinator’s experience: “Two-thirds of the questions were just asking him about the strengths and vulnerabilities of the team and how he’d attack it, as if he were there to help with the team’s self-scout as much as interview for a job.”
Now scale that dynamic to nineteen interviews, with coaches from across the league. All answering similar questions about the same roster and the same young quarterback.
Crowdsourcing a Development Plan for Cam Ward
Every interview will include some version of the same question: “How would you develop Cam Ward?”
Ward threw for 3,169 yards and 15 touchdowns as a rookie on a 3-14 team. He’s the franchise’s first number-one overall pick since Earl Campbell in 1978. The entire organizational future runs through him.
When you ask nineteen coaches how they’d develop your franchise quarterback, you’re essentially gathering perspectives from across football’s coaching spectrum. McCarthy developed Aaron Rodgers and Dak Prescott. McDaniel elevated Tua Tagovailoa. Harbaugh coached Joe Flacco and Lamar Jackson. You get the point.
Even the defensive coaches offer significant value. When coordinators like Spagnuolo, Saleh and Shula evaluate Ward on film, you’re getting the perspective of someone who’s spent years scheming against elite quarterbacks. That’s premium scouting intel dressed up as interview conversation.
What 19 Interviews Actually Produce
When a data-informed front office conducts this many interviews, patterns emerge. And the Titans have built exactly the infrastructure needed to identify and act on those patterns.
- Consensus views become visible. If a majority of coaches identify the same roster weakness, that’s a signal, not noise. The analytics team can categorize and weight these observations, tracking which concerns appear repeatedly and which are outliers. When twelve of nineteen coaches point to the same problem, that’s not opinion anymore. That’s actionable intelligence.
- Development philosophies get catalogued. How would each coach approach Ward’s pocket presence? His decision-making speed? His leadership development? Each answer represents a data point. The Titans can map these philosophies against Ward’s actual performance metrics, identifying which approaches align with his strengths and which might accelerate his growth. Aggregate those responses, and you’ve got a comprehensive framework built from the collective wisdom of some of the league’s best offensive minds.
- Competitive intelligence flows naturally. Candidates from AFC South teams or teams that recently faced Tennessee offer direct insight into how opponents perceive the Titans. What do other teams think of the offensive line? How do defensive coordinators view the receiving corps? This is the kind of external perspective that’s usually impossible to obtain, delivered voluntarily in an interview setting. The analytics department can cross-reference these observations against their own evaluations to identify blind spots.
- Scheme preferences reveal themselves. Every coach has tendencies. Run-heavy or pass-first? Zone blocking or gap schemes? Cover 3 or man-heavy? By documenting these preferences across nineteen interviews, the Titans build a database of coaching philosophies that extends well beyond this single hire. That information becomes valuable for future game-planning, understanding how certain coordinators think, and even evaluating future coaching candidates.
- Organizational benchmarking happens automatically. Every candidate describes how their current team operates. How do the Chiefs structure their analytics integration? How does San Francisco’s front office communicate with coaches? That’s nineteen data points on how successful organizations run their processes. The analytics staff can identify best practices and measure Tennessee’s own operations against league standards.
The question isn’t whether the Titans will collect this information. Every interview generates it. The question is how systematically they’ll synthesize and apply it. With five full-time analysts, custom software tools, and a president who built his reputation on challenging conventional wisdom through data, the Titans are well-positioned to turn qualitative interview insights into quantitative advantages.
The Bigger Picture
Eventually, the Titans will hire someone. Maybe Harbaugh, the proven winner. Maybe Nagy, looking for a fresh start with a young quarterback. Maybe McDaniel, seeking to overhaul an organization with offensive innovation. Maybe a rising coordinator with fresh perspectives and concepts.
But regardless of who gets the job, the Titans will walk away from this process with something valuable. Nineteen different perspectives on their roster, their quarterback, and their path forward. Nineteen different development plans for Cam Ward. Nineteen different evaluations of what’s working and what needs to change.
The organization that once ranked last in analytical sophistication is now conducting what might be the most information-rich coaching search in recent memory. Whether that’s the explicit goal or just a byproduct of being thorough, the competitive advantage is real.
When the new coach arrives, the Titans will know more about their own team than perhaps any organization in football. And in a league where edges are measured in inches, that knowledge matters.
