With the Titans struggling to secure wins and relevance, a man who spent nearly a generation in the franchise’s front office is back. Sort of.
Former Titans G.M. Floyd Reese will be returning to Nashville to participate in a daily talk show known as Sports Night, a somewhat odd title given that it’s on from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. local time each Monday through Friday.
“I love the Titans; there is still so much of a big chunk of me that’s still over there at the facility that I’m sure I will be bias[ed] to some extent,” Reese told Mike Organ of the Tennessean. “But the point is, now I’m being paid to tell them what I think, and after 40 years in the NFL and doing all the things that I’ve done, I will have an opinion on most things. I’m not setting out to be a homer, and I’m not setting out to pound on people. I know what it was like when things were going well, and I want to get back there.”
That last line sort of means he truly is setting out to be a homer. And that he’s also setting out to pound on people.
Right now, plenty of people involved with the franchise need to be pounded on. Not only is the team consistently losing, but its thoroughly uninteresting. It figures to be even less interesting in the short term, given the leak to David Climer of the Tennessean that the franchise thinks Zach Mettenberger can be a “poor team’s Tom Brady.”
With the draft less than three weeks away, it’s hard to take anything the Titans (or any other team) say publicly or privately at face value. Maybe the goal is to position the franchise to get Jameis Winston, if the Bucs decide they don’t want him and if a team like the Jets doesn’t feel compelled to get in front of three teams (Titans, Jaguars, and Raiders) that don’t need quarterbacks.
If Mettenberger is the guy, he needs to start performing like Brady sooner than later, or Reese will be spending plenty of on-air time delivering the kind of poundings he once took from the local radio guys.