The 2025 season was a difficult one for the Titans, a campaign in which Tennessee fired its coach and didn't start to put things together until the final five weeks of the season.
Jeffery Simmons was there for all of it, earning a first-team All-Pro selection despite playing for one of the NFL's weakest teams. If that wasn't bad enough, as Tennessee trudged to another last-place finish in the AFC South, Simmons and his fellow Titans veterans were forced to watch their former coach, Mike Vrabel, lead an incredible turnaround in his first season with the New England Patriots.
That understandably left them wondering what could have been had Tennessee stuck with Vrabel through the team's difficulties in 2022 and 2023 instead of firing him prior to the 2024 season.
"That's the nature of it," Simmons said during an appearance on the Bussin' With The Boys podcast. "We talked about it in the locker room. ... Guys, they're gonna speak their mind, like 'Damn, what if? What if we could be in that situation right now?'"
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."
With No. 1 overall pick Cam Ward still getting his feet wet in the NFL, it became clear the Titans would need to find a new leader to guide them through the rebuilding stages. Unsurprisingly, without any legitimate signs of progress, Tennessee fired Callahan following the Titans' Week 6 loss which dropped them to 1-5.
Vrabel, meanwhile, was already enjoying the spoils of his efforts in New England in a season that eventually saw them return to the throne of the AFC East, secure the No. 2 seed and advance to Sunday's AFC Championship Game.
Simmons has nothing but respect and appreciation for Vrabel and his accomplishments in New England, which mirror Vrabel's peak over his six seasons spent in Nashville. He also seems to be hoping the Titans find a similarly regimented and defensive-minded candidate to fill the vacancy left by Callahan's departure.
"Props to Vrabel," Simmons said. "When you're watching them play, you're like, 'That's Vrabel's style of the way he gets his guys to play.' I think that's a testament to him.
"We saw the crazy stuff about Stefon Diggs in the past; he's a diva, he's this and that. Not one time have we heard that in New England. ... When you turn on the TV and see these guys play, you're just like 'Damn, what if?'"
"I'm not saying I want to go to New England, but it's fun to see. Because that's what I know. I know the type of style he plays. It's exciting to see. No hate against him."
Simmons' prayers may soon be answered. The Titans are expected to hire 49ers defensive coordinator and former Jets coach Robert Saleh, NFL Network Insiders Ian Rapoport, Tom Pelissero and Mike Garafolo reported on Monday.
Saleh comes with a history of success as a defensive coordinator and most recently accomplished one of his greatest feats in his career by holding together a banged-up 49ers defense, coaching them to a 13th-place finish in points allowed per game (21.8) and devising a game plan that helped the 49ers upset the Eagles on Wild Card Weekend. His track record as a head coach, however, is less appealing: Saleh oversaw the Jets for three and a half seasons, posting a 20-36 record and falling well short of expectations due in part to Aaron Rodgers' season-ending Achilles injury suffered in Week 1 of the 2023 campaign.
Saleh has since rehabbed his reputation with San Francisco. He can prove his doubters wrong by guiding a very young Titans roster to success, and could use Simmons' contributions both on and off the field to expedite such a process.
Simmons would likely be on board -- as long as Saleh holds Simmons and his teammates accountable. Fortunately, Simmons already knows what that looks like from his five years spent playing for Vrabel.
"It's just that feeling in the building where yeah, we're going to have fun but we're going to know how to do things before we even touch the football field," Simmons said. "We all can say it: the little things sometimes don't matter. But I feel like the things that happen off the football field, in the meeting rooms, they lead onto the football field."
He'll watch the product of that approach take the field Sunday in Denver with the hope that it's a preview of his future.
