AFC Notes: Lou Anarumo, Chad Brinker, Mike Borgonzi, Colts, Titans

Colts

Colts DC Lou Anarumo detailed how he plans to fix the team’s defense and hold players accountable. Despite not meeting all of the players yet, he has met with veteran DT DeForest Buckner, who is fed up with the lack of accountability. 

“There’s definitely a fine balance between holding guys accountable and babysitting,” Buckner said, via James Boyd of The Athletic. “I got my own kids. I’m not here to babysit nobody. … That’s not my job.”

“My standard is going to be that I’m up there and I’m going to be a truth-teller. I’m going to tell them the truth,” Anarumo said. “It’s my job to say, ‘Yes, you’re doing it right,’ or ‘No, you’re doing it wrong.’ That will happen, and it will happen to all of them. I don’t care (about your) number of years in the league. Good players, great players want to be coached. They want to know the truth. … If they don’t, then there’s probably a little bit of an issue there, but the best ones I’ve ever been around (say), ‘Coach me. Coach me hard. Tell me what you want.’”

“I think every coach would say (you want good players),” Anarumo continued. “(Coaches are) not out there making tackles and getting off blocks. You’re going to have to have good players, that’s for sure. But I know this, in this league these days, guys are in and out of the lineup for several different reasons. The rosters turn over. So, you’ve got to be flexible enough as a coach to be able to work with a guy who maybe was not even on your team the week before. It’s really player acquisition time, right? Free agency, draft — those things. So, we’ve got to finalize the staffing, and then we’re going to get all the playbook stuff done, and while we’re doing that, we’re managing free agency and (scouting for the) draft. … It’ll be a busy time.”

Titans 

Titans president of football operations Chad Brinker discussed bringing in newly hired GM Mike Borgonzi and how the structure of the front office will be set up between the two. Tennessee got some scrutiny from the league office because Brinker will have final say over the whole football operations department, however, the league determined it was a legitimate GM job. Brinker envisions Borgonzi being focused on the player evaluation side of the position while he acts in a support role for other parts of the job.

“To ask a general manager to come into an organization as a first-time general manager – normally, you get the job because there’s a problem,” Brinker said, via Main Street Media. “The roster’s not in great shape. You’re not winning football (games) and a lot of general managers today you’re seeing come out of these AGM positions, and what that position is essentially doing is they’re running the pro and college scouting staffs. And they may have a few responsibilities spread in, depending on how long they’ve been the AGM, but what they’re really, really good at is identifying talent and picking the players and that’s why they get these jobs.

“So then you get them and you bring them into your organization. You plop them into the seat to fix this team, but oh by the way, you’ve got 14 direct reports on top of it, and you’ve got to manage all these other things you’ve never managed before. What has gotten them that job, and the thing they need to do most, that’s 20 percent of their time is spent doing that. And 80 percent of their time is doing all that (other things), and by the time they figure it out, they get fired and the cycle begins again.

“A guy like John Schneider (Seattle) has been a general manager for 16 years, and he can run the whole thing. Brandon Beane is doing an excellent job in Buffalo. He can run the whole thing. But it takes time to kind of get there. And what this structure kind of helps, and maybe it’s unique to my even my background, it allows the general manager to come in and truly focus on the team and building the roster and working with the coaching staff. Obviously, you’ve got the sports med, the player performance side and player engagement. Those are things we need our general manager to have the pulse on day to day, and it allows me to support around it. But also, because of my background I can help Mike from the player eval side, just because I grew up in the business with it.”

Titans

Titans president of football operations Chad Brinker explained why the team stuck with HC Brian Callahan despite shaking things up and firing GM Ran Carthon after a 3-14 season. He said they thought Callahan was an excellent football “technician” similar to 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan or Rams HC Sean McVay. He believed Callahan deserved another year to get the team where they wanted to go while admitting they needed better play out of the quarterback position.

“We just felt like he had the foundation,” Brinker said via Main Street Media. “He’s a coach’s son. His dad coached in the NFL as a head coach. He (Bill Callahan) was a head coach at the collegiate level . He (Brian) was at De La Salle, which was one of the top high school programs in the nation. He never lost a high school game. They guy has just been around it his whole life. He’s extremely brilliant and smart, all that. I say all that, at the beginning of all this, he was one of the top candidates on the market last year, and we get into our situation. We had a lot of holes on our roster and we were trying to fill holes, this that and the other. And the quarterback position, it’s no secret, didn’t play well. That would make it tough on any coach. We need better play out of the quarterback position. And his father with the run game system they put in – he’s one of the top offensive line coaches, if not the best offensive line coach in the NFL. And his run game system is really, really good, and to be able to marry that with Brian’s pass game system, we just feel like after one year, just to scrap all that, didn’t make any sense.

“So we want to give him a chance to grow at that. Because he was a first-time play-caller in addition to being a first-time head coach. That’s hard enough in and of itself. Brian and I had a lot of conversations around that. We’ve got to support him and help him grow. I think helping him get some support – you’ve read about the special teams upgrade (John Fassel hire) there and getting someone there that is considered one of the top special teams coaches in the NFL will hopefully help stabilize that too. Dennard (Wilson) did a really good job for what he was given on defense. We played well there. We feel like he needs a little bit more time to grow into the head coach we hope he can become, and that’s why we want him to be our head coach.“