Fisher's future with Titans is in doubt
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Jeff Fisher’s decision to stay in football after his playing days ended kept him from a future in sales. The same skills he would have used in that career have put him among the NFL’s best coaches.
The Tennessee Titans’ leader is a top communicator who stays on message with the media and fans through his weekly radio and TV shows. He can be charming and is great at networking, especially as a longtime co-chairman of the NFL’s competition committee. Players see him as tough, but love how he knows the times when to ease back during a long season.
These skills are part of why Fisher has coached more NFL games for one franchise than all but six Hall of Famers: George Halas, Tom Landry, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Curly Lambeau and Bud Grant.
But the face of the Tennessee franchise for 16 full seasons and the league’s longest-tenured coach goes into his 273rd game with his future in question like never before after owner Bud Adams’ Super Bowl dream disappeared as the team imploded. Fisher insists he isn’t thinking about whether the season finale at Indianapolis (9-6) Sunday is his final game with the Titans (6-9).
“I’m not going to go there. I’ve never gone there,” Fisher said. “Again, I’m going to take the same approach I take week after week, and that’s just to get them ready to play and try and find a way to win a ballgame.”
Adams has stuck with Fisher about three times longer than any of his previous coaches. Adams was so convinced this year’s team was Super Bowl-bound that he left players T-shirts and a note before the season opener.
Instead, the Titans blew a 5-2 start by losing seven of eight games, the fifth time in the last seven seasons they’ve had skids of five games or longer. Adams isn’t happy and plans to evaluate Fisher after the season, even though his coach is under contract for 2011 at an estimated $6.5 million.
“All I know is he’s one of the best coaches in our business, that’s for sure,” Colts coach Jim Caldwell said. “He’s a guy that his teams are always extremely well prepared, they play hard and obviously they give us fits. That’s what I know. He does his job and does his job extremely well.”
Just consider the numbers.
The NFL has had 111 different coaches, including four changes this season, since Adams promoted Fisher from defensive coordinator with six games left in 1994 while this team was still the Houston Oilers.
Derided locally as “Coach .500,” Fisher ranks third among active coaches in career wins (147-125) trailing only Bill Belichick (176) and Mike Shanahan (160). He ranks 20th all-time in coaching victories, and this year’s skid has kept him from climbing past Tony Dungy (148).
Since moving into LP Field in 1999, Tennessee ranks seventh in the NFL in winning percentage with a 110-81 record.
But the Titans haven’t won a playoff game since beating Baltimore in a 2004 wild-card game.
Fisher has made his mistakes. He didn’t keep enough leaders in his locker room after a youth movement this offseason. Some staff changes also might be needed with the defense 26th overall in coordinator Chuck Cecil’s second season.
