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What GM Mike Borgonzi said about turning Titans into version of Chiefs
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- What GM Mike Borgonzi said about turning Titans into version of Chiefs
Remember when Mike Vrabel and Jon Robinson's Tennessee Titans were going to be New England South?
Or when the Titans ' "collaboration era" with Ran Carthon and Brian Callahan was going to replicate the success Detroit was having?
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Or how about when Chad Brinker's "draft and develop" method was going to turn Nashville into an extension of Green Bay ?
Well, now it's general manager Mike Borgonzi 's turn — to interview his former Kansas City Chiefs coworkers Matt Nagy and Steve Spagnuolo, recapturing and recreating the magic Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes and company have built, right?
Not exactly. At least not according to Borgonzi.
"I'm looking to create the model for the Tennessee Titans ," he told reporters on Jan. 6 at the formal start of the Titans' coaching search. "I learned a ton of things from where I was in the past. I've taken certain things on how we evaluate players and how important the coach is during the process and how we do certain things. But this is our team here. The people that we have."
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Borgonzi worked in Kansas City from 2009 through 2024. He overlapped with Nagy for eight years (2013-17, 2022-24) and Spagnuolo for six (2019-24). During that time, Borgonzi rose the ranks from pro scout through various other front office roles into the position of assistant general manager.
And in that time, the Kansas City Chiefs . . . well, they became the Chiefs. Eighteen playoff wins. Seven conference championship appearances. Five Super Bowl berths. Three Lombardi trophies. If ever there has been a worthy franchise to emulate, the Chiefs seem to be it.
Emulating another team is a dangerous game, though. Throughout the two decades of the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady dynasty in New England, no one out-Patriot'ed the Patriots . The vaunted Green Bay model that spread through the league after Ron Wolf took over in the early 1990s has yielded awesome results in Green Bay and Seattle , but also flamed out in San Francisco , Washington , Oakland, Cleveland and . . . Kansas City. No one who has won the NFL's Executive of the Year award this decade worked for a Super Bowl winner before building winning franchises of their own.
That shouldn't be read as an indictment on Borgonzi. Or on Brinker. Or anyone who has seen firsthand what it takes to win a Super Bowl. Experience matters. Borgonzi said as much when talking about the difference between interviewing head coaching candidates who've done the job before (like Nagy and Spagnuolo) and candidates who've only been assistants. Someone who knows what it takes to get to the pinnacle has a shortcut to repeating the task.
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But that's also a trap. Because psychologically, experience getting to the pinnacle trains the brain to repeat patterns. That'd be great if there was only one way to win Super Bowls. But the Chiefs' success doesn't look anything like the Patriots', which doesn't match the Philadelphia Eagles ', which doesn't match the way things are done in Baltimore or Pittsburgh .
Around the time Borgonzi was hired in January 2025, and then again about the start of the 2025 season, Titans executives expressed the idea of wanting to be a "Mount Rushmore" franchise. The goal is to be one of the organizations that's always good, always competitive.
These franchises never rebuild. They reload. Think Green Bay moving on from Mike McCarthy to Matt LaFleur. Think Seattle transitioning from Pete Carroll to Mike Macdonald. Think Pittsburgh and Baltimore after Kevin Colbert and Ozzie Newsome retired, passing the reins to Omar Khan and Eric DeCosta.
That's self-sustenance. Those are organizations that can identify what they are and how they do things, and can rest on those principles in moments of crisis.
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That's what Borgonzi's talking about when he says the Titans are trying to establish a model that works for the Titans. The goal isn't to be somebody else. The goal is to figure out what being the Titans means.
None of that, of course, precludes Borgonzi from hiring Nagy or Spagnuolo. Kansas City GM Brett Veach followed Reid from Philadelphia to Kansas City before being promoted to his current job in 2017. Buffalo built an identity around GM Brandon Beane and coach Sean McDermott, who had worked together in Carolina. Former Rams quarterback Jared Goff has been central to former Rams executive Brad Holmes' turnaround in Detroit.
And heck, look close to home: Robinson and Vrabel's shared shorthand from their time in New England yielded some of the best results in Titans history.
When asked why he believes the Titans' coaching vacancy will be attractive to candidates, Borgonzi brought up quarterback Cam Ward and defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons and the young nucleus and the new Nissan Stadium and the city of Nashville.
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But his main talking point is front office quality. He truly believes in himself and Brinker and assistant GM Dave Ziegler (from the Belichick tree) and football adviser Reggie McKenzie (another Packers disciple) and VP of player personnel Dan Saganey (developed for years in Cleveland, of all places) and the unit's ability to weave disparate experiences into a unified vision.
"There's a lot of really good positive things to come here. But the first thing is the people, the people in the building," Borgonzi said. "We have a lot of experience here throughout the building, a lot of good people. And we have support from our ownership group. Amy (Adams Strunk) supports us in everything that we do here. Yeah, those are really the reasons why I think this will be a really attractive place for a coach."
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com . Follow Nick on X @nicksuss . Subscribe to the Talkin' Titans newsletter for updates sent directly to your inbox.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: What GM Mike Borgonzi said about turning Titans into version of Chiefs
