The OTP | A History Lesson

for a very special reason. Mike Keith, you have been given a little job.

It was incredibly important to Bud Adams, it's incredibly important to our new ownership team led by Amy Adams, Trunk and Kenneth and Barkley Adams, and so I've got an opportunity to pass some of that history along, and I'm pretty excited about it.

And just like these guys come from colleges and take pride in the history and tradition of their colleges, we take a lot of pride in who we are, where we came from, what we're about, and there are a lot of important bits and pieces outside of just wins and losses that I think it will benefit the guys

to completely understand, for example, our history with Jacksonville. Why the Jacksonville game is a big thing for us, and it really stems back to the fact that we beat them three times in nineteen ninety nine, the only three losses of the season. We kept them from going to the super Bowl, and for that reason, they really like to beat us. So hopefully I can help add a little bit of context to things like that example and can sort of add something.

And it really started for us in winter of nineteen fifty nine when the man who had become our owner, Bud Adams, took a meeting with Lamar Hunt, the man who would become the owner of the Kansas City Chiefs and the AFC Championship Trophy is now named for him. At this point, there were two very young men and mister Hunt had an idea to start a football league to compete with the NFL. The NFL was not the

big deal in the day. College football was a much bigger deal than pro football at that moment, so there was a feeling that another league, particular clearly of cities that didn't have NFL teams, would have a chance to make a dent. Mister Adams took the meeting and he said I'm in, and those two men moved it forward and eventually started the American Football League later that year.

The original American Football League teams the Boston Patriots, the Buffalo Bills, the Dallas Texans who became the Kansas City Chiefs, the Denver Broncos obviously, the Houston Oilers who became the Tennessee Titans, the Los Angeles Chargers, the Oakland Raiders, and the New York Titans. And the New York Titans became the New York Jets, and in the late nineteen nineties they actually gave us the name Titans when we moved to Tennessee. So they're in a strange way part of

our history. But the most important thing that happened in the early stage of the development of the American Football League was largely done by Bud Adams, our founder, because the biggest football star in the country at that moment in time in nineteen fifty nine was a running back from LSU by the name of Billy Cannon. Billy Cannon led LSU to the nineteen fifty eight National Championship. He was the nineteen fifty nine Heisman Trophy winner, and the

NFL illegally signed him to a contract. In November of his senior year, the Los Angeles Rams put him under contract at that point. The contract was then going to be dated January twod nineteen sixty, after Billy Cannon had played in the Sugar Bowl. Well, mister Adams, who was pro football's original outlaw, said that doesn't work. So he offered Billy Cannon and his family more money to sign

with the Houston Oilers. And what he did is he had a man by the name of Adrian Burke under the goal post on January first, nineteen sixty at the Sugar Bowl, and they signed Billy Cannon to a contract with our organization the minute he stopped playing college football. It went to court and the Houston Oilers won. Billy Cannon started off as a Houston Oiler. That struck the blow for the AFL because suddenly they were going to

take on the NFL head to head. We had great success in the early years of the AFL, the first two AFL championships won by the Houston Oilers. The Oilers also played in the title game in the third year of the league. There was a lot of back and forth between the NFL and the AFL over players. It escalated to the point that it was way too expensive for both of them, and so after nineteen sixty six, a merger was put together and so the AFL teams would become part of the NFL and it would expand.

For the four years during the time between the agreement and the merger, the AFL champion would play the NFL champion in what we now know as the Super Bowl. That's how the Super Bowl got started. The AFL won two, the NFL won two, and then in nineteen seventy it was all put together, and so the AFL helped to form the AFC as we now know it. Those AFL teams, and of course there's the NFC on the other side, and now the NFC and the AFC champions play for

the Super Bowl. So that's a little bit of the backstory. After the merger happened, the Oilers had some success until they drafted a running back from Texas who had won the Heisman Trophy by the name of Earl Campbell, and for the next two seasons, for seventy eight and seventy nine, the Houston Oilers played in the AFC Championship game, had great success and there was a wave among the fan base that became known as Love You Blue, and it was one of the glory times of the Oilers. Unfortunately,

didn't last very long. The team sank back to despair and mister Adams decided to do something really bold. In nineteen eighty four, he went out and spent boukoos of money at the time forty years ago to sign a quarterback from Canada who had played at the University of Washington, but who had to go to Canada after his college career, and he had been so successful with the edmundton Escobos that at that point he was a big, big commodity.

Mister Adams landed him his name, Warren Moon, a quarterback. The significance was not just that they paid a lot of money and that they went out and got the guy from Canada. The significance was it was the first time in NFL history that an owner had gone out and had signed a black quarterback to be the face of the franchise. He said, you are a guy, You're gonna lead us, and it was a historic move. It's won to this day that Warren Moon still talks about

anytime he's asked about it. What it meant to the entire league. It was also a very good move. Eventually, after a couple of years of transition, the team went to the playoffs seven straight years, and Warren Moon was a pro bowler for virtually every one of them. It turned out to be one of the greats of his era. Nineteen ninety four, thirty years ago, something changed, though the salary cap came into be. The original salary cap in

nineteen ninety four was thirty five million dollars. There were players last next year in this league whose salary cap cost was higher than that, but in those days, thirty five million dollars was where it started. The Oilers were not in position to keep the team together, so they had to break it all up and do another reset. In the midst of the reset in nineteen ninety five,

the organization did something else historic. With the third pick in the nineteen ninety five draft, the Houston Oilers selected Steve McNair, quarterback all corn State. They decided that Steve McNair would be our future going forward, and a lot of people were surprised that they would take a quarterback from all corn at say you're going to be the guy. The other significant thing that happened during that period of time is Houston would not build mister Adams a new stadium.

We had always been renters. With the advent of the salary cap, the big issue for us was you needed a different business model where you controlled things in your own stadium because as we knew, the salary cap was only going to go up. And so mister Adams asked Houston to build the new stadium. They wouldn't build it. He realized from a business standpoint, he had no options. So he asked his chief lieutenants with the Oilers organization,

find me candidates where we can move the franchise. There were several mister Adams settled on Nashville, and he did that for a very strange reason. Mister Adams, obviously a wild, wildly successful businessman, sat on several boards of companies. One of those boards was Couson Plastics, a toy company in Franklin. So mister Adams would come to Nashville periodically for different board meetings with Couson Plastics, and he liked Nashville. He

saw things grow, He saw things happening. He liked the people, and so he told his team with the Oilers, I want to move to Nashville, Tennessee. There's no pro football in the Mid South. All we had here was the SEC, and of course the SEC, as we still know to this day, is king. And he wondered, why can't we make pro football as exciting in this region as the Southeastern Conference to football fans. He knew there would be no problem finding football fans here, but he had to

get a stadium. So he picked up the phone and he called Nashville Mayor Phil Bredison and he said, Mayor Bretison, b Adams with the Houston Oilers, if you'll build me as stadium, I'll move my football team there. And Brettison hung up the phone. He thought it was a prank call. So a few minutes later they realized it wasn't a prank call, they called him back. Everyone had a good laugh, and in nineteen ninety six the process of moving the team here started. But Nashville had no stadium of its own,

so in nineteen ninety seven we played in Memphis. We were supposed to play in Memphis for two years. That didn't work out great so in nineteen ninety eight they convinced Vanderbilt to let us play there while what we now know is Nissan Stadium, originally a Delphia Colisseum, was being built. Nineteen ninety nine was the year the franchise had gone eight and eight for three straight years. The coaches and everybody with the organization knew that mister Adams

expected to go to the playoffs inside our building. This building, which had opened in August of ninety nine, August twenty fifth, to the exact, they called it playoffs or pink slips. Everybody was getting the acts if it didn't work. So we had three goals as an organization. Number one, make the playoffs, Number two sell out every game at what was then known as Adelphia Coliseum, and number three host a playoff game. And what happened. We went thirteen and three,

but we didn't win our division. Our division at that time was the AFC Central. Jacksonville won the AFC Central that year. They were fourteen and two. We were thirteen and three. Jacksonville's only two losses to us we beat them down there in a driving rainstorm in September, and then we beat them up here on the day after Christmas. But they were the division champs, they had the best record in ball and so they would be the number

one seed in the playoffs. We did get a home game though, We got to host the Buffalo Bills January eighth, two thousand, back and forth affair. Buffalo kicked a field goal with sixteen seconds to go. We're down sixteen to fifteen Titans at that point. On the sidelines, Jeff Fisher and his Special teams coach Alan Lowry said, we have to pull out something we practiced every Saturday called home Run Throwback. That was the name of the play home Run Throwback. But we have all kinds of problems, all

kinds of problems. First of all, our return mayn Derek Mason, who went on to become a great receiver for us and for the Baltimore Ravens. Derek Mason has a concussion. They had to hide his helmet in a trunk because he wanted to go back in the game. He can't go, Anthony Dorr said, is his backup. Anthony Dorsett has leg cramps,

can't play. So we go out on the field to run home run throwback with sixteen seconds to go in this playoff game, and they pull out Kevin Dyson, a second year receiver from Utah, and they say, listen, you just need to go in and just you're basically the eleventh guy. That's it. You're just going in. As they go into the field, the guy who is supposed to catch the lateral pass, Isaac Byrd, tells Kevin Dyson, whatever you do, stay behind me just in case I have

to throw a second lateral to you. So Steve Christie's the kicker for Buffalo. He kicks it up in the air. That's a huge problem. We had never practiced it with a kick up in the air. We'd always practiced it with a squibkick. Our fullback Lorenzo O'Neill, who was basically a guard with a low number camps out under it, were terrified. First of all, he basically has, as Frank Whitcheck would say, spoons for hands, and everybody thought he's either gonna drop it or he's gonna fair catch it.

Why is he doing this? Well, when he went onto the field, he told Frank, if they kick it short, I'll get it and hand it back to you. And so that's what he did. He caught the kick off and turned and handed it back to Frank Whitecheck. Whitcheck was a tight end pro bowler, one of the best athletes on our football team period. He ran to his right, turned and threw the ball back down the twenty five yard line thirty yards. Now, he was wearing tight end

pads and he made this incredibly act, curate throw. He thought he was going to be throwing it to Isaac Burr. The problem was when the ball went up in the air. Initially, Ike started forward and fell down. He took himself out of the play. So what should have happened is Frank Whitcheck's pass right down the twenty five yard line should have gone out of bounds. But remember what Ike told Kevin Dyson stayed behind me, just in case Kevin Dyson goes back, catches the ball, and Buffalo is totally out

of position. They had been fooled by everything, and all of a sudden, Kevin Dyson heads down a path on the west sideline toward the north end zone and there's nobody there. Seventy five yard touchdown, the Music City Miracle, one of the most famous plays in NFL history. So it was neil to Whycheck Dyson should have never worked, but it worked because the other eight guys executed their

spots perfectly. They executed the fake they threw off Buffalo, and then they formed the corridor up the sidelines and took Kevin Dyson home. Didn't get a penalty, and just

make sure and do their jobs. It's important to know the other eight guys who were on the field for the Music City miracle number twenty, Rodney Thomas, number thirty five, Perry Phoenix number fifty, Terry Killings number fifty one, Greg Favors number fifty nine, Doug Coleman number eighty three, Isaac Byrd number eighty four, Larry Brown number eighty eight, Jackie Harris. Because you know, to this day, all of those players

claimed that as their highest moment in the league. A couple of those guys work in administration in athletics, and it's in their box. He was part of the famous Music City miracle. It was unbelievable. Place erupted, and suddenly Nashville became a massive, overwhelming, incredible NFL town in one day. Next week we went to Indianapolis. They were a heavy favorite to beat us. Peyton Manning's first playoff game, we somehow won that game came home, ten thousand people were

in the Nashville airport waiting for us. It was crazy. The next week we go to Jacksonville AFC championship game. They're great revenge. They had beaten Miami the week before in Dan Marino's last career game sixty two to seven. Damn is right, and boy, they were laying for us. And we walked in there and smacked him right in the mouth, beat him thirty three to fourteen on their field in front of their fans at what was to

be their coronation moment. And we went to the super Bowl. Now, if you don't understand from what I just said, why Jacksonville has heat for us to this day. That's the reason. So we went to the super Bowl, Super Bowl thirty four. Kevin Dyson was tackled on the one yard line as time ran out. One of the greatest Super Bowls ever. Nashville was so enthralled by everything. They had a parade for us. After we lost the Super Bowl. More people went to our parade down Broadway, then went to the

parade in Saint Louis for the Rams. It's crazy. The five year period we had, those first five years starting in ninety nine, sixty one wins, four playoff appearances, two AFC Championship games, that Super Bowl. One of the most significant things that happened during that period of time was Steve McNair. In two thousand and three, was named the MVP of the NFL, first black quarterback to ever be

named the league's MVP. The most courageous player I've ever seen, the toughest player I've ever seen, my favorite player that I've ever seen. If I had to walk out these doors and put it all on the line to save my family, the one Titans player I would ask to go with me to this day is Steve McNair. You will never find anybody that was associated with organization who wouldn't say the same thing. Eddie George would say the

same thing. Jovon Kurst would say the same thing. That's what he was to all of us, and when he won that MVP, that felt like we all wanted and Steve understood the significance. He understood what Warren Moon had meant to him, what Randall Cunningham had meant to him, and that what he meant to quarterbacks that would follow it was special and it made us all proud. We went through another little downturn because of the salary cap.

Came back in two thousand and seven, went to the playoffs two thousand and eight, ten and oh to start the season, thirteen and three. Great year. Two thousand and nine. Chris Johnson rushes for two thousand yards CJ two K. It was phenomenal to watch. He set the NFL record for yards from scrimmage over twenty five hundred yards from scrimmage.

That still stands. It was fun. It was fun, got rocky, as it sometimes does, had some starts and stops with coaches, had some starts and stops with quarterbacks, and we were out in the wilderness for seven years, I mean really out in the wilderness. But twenty sixteen we got things back on track and that started a run of six straight winning seasons. It was fun again. Twenty nineteen through twenty twenty one was really fun. Nineteen we go to

the playoffs, first round. We draw the New England Patriots in Foxborough. Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, all those guys. Rumor is if and when they lose, Brady's gone, he wants out. We walk in that place and Derrick Henry went crazy that night. Our defense did something incredibly special that night and we beat them, and that was Tom Brady's last game with the New England Patriots. The Tennessee Titans, your team did that. The next week, we go into Baltimore.

They're the number one seed. Lamar Jackson's the MVP. We got no chance. We beat him, and out of nowhere, a nine to seven team goes to the AFC Championship game and we're ahead of the Kansas City Chiefs, and then well didn't work out the way we wanted. Twenty twenty, we come back, We win the AFC South for the first time in twelve years. Twenty twenty one, we win the AFC South again. We have the best record in football.

It was a good, good run. And then there are resets, and we're coming off of another reset at this point. You know what stands out that may surprise you is it is possible that on your team, the twenty twenty four Tennessee Titans, we will only start three players who started for US two years ago in twenty twenty two. Think about that, out of twenty four spots, it's conceivable that only three of them will be manned by guys

who were here two years ago. That's the NFL. There are always resets, but it opens up opportunities for people. And this has been an organization that consistently has seen opportunity go to people. Whether you're from a small school, whether you're from a big school, no matter what you look like, no matter, like I said, where you come from. We have a type and that type is people who want to win championships. Because what we want here is we want you to be taking that parade down Broadway

when we hoist the Lombardi Trophy. That's why you're here, That's why people have come through these doors. That's why mister Adams and now Amy Adams Strunk says, we just want people who want to win championships. That's what we're after. We have some people on our wall who have their

number retired. Warren Moon is number one, Steve mcmahor number nine, Eddie George number twenty seven, Earl Campbell, number thirty four, Jim Norton, who was a safety and a punter for the Oilers in the sixties, number forty three, Mike Munchak, one of the great guards of the eighties, and our head coach, our offensive line coach for a period of time number sixty three, Elvin Bethay, one of the great past rushers of the nineteen seventies, Number sixty five, and

Bruce Matthews, a guy who incredibly played nineteen years in the offensive line in this league, number seventy four. So if you wanted one of those eight numbers and wondered why you didn't get it, that's why. But those guys were certainly standouts for us in certain ways who it can't be measured. As a matter of fact, five of them are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. We've essentially done everything in sixty five years, but win the championship,

win the Super Bowl. That's why you're here. I can't wait to watch you get this opportunity. I can't wait to have a chance to tell your stories and your story as a group on the and on TV, through social media, through everything we do, all the things that I've talked about, Bud Adams, taking Billy Cannon from the NFL, Love You Blue, Earl Campbell, Warren Moon, Steve McNair, the Titans, the Music City Miracle, CJ two K, doing what we did in the twenty nineteen playoffs, ending the Patriots run

Derrick Henry, Big Jeff. That's all in your DNA, and it's important you know it. It's important you know why we wear the colors we wear is because mister Adams would not leave the history behind in Houston. When we moved to Nashville. Mister Adams told the commissioner he was not going to do what other franchises had done because he founded this organization, and so they retired the name Oilers, and all of our history came with us in order for us to become the Titans, So you're still part

of that. You will meet the Oilers when we have homecoming week. You're obviously going to meet a lot of the Titans because of our owner, Amy Adams Strunk and what she does. Our guys come back. They love to come back, and you're going to be surprised the first time you see Javon Kirsch walk down the hall, when you see Eddie George float in here for lunch, when you have a chance to meet CJ. Two K and all of these cats because they like being here with

our ownership group. You've arrived at the right time, though, because we're ready to elevate again and the stadium is such a big deal. I was here for the first one when we opened it in ninety nine. We won our first thirteen games in what's now known as Nissan Stadium. Our new stadium, with a roof two point one billion dollars, will host Super Bowls, it will host Final Fours, It'll host the College Football Playoff, It'll host WrestleMania, It'll host

some of the biggest concerts in the world. But the best part about it is it's going to be the best home field advantage in the NFL because everything they have done to design it has been about world class right these events, because Nashville has become a world class city just like Bud Adams thought it would. But it's never lost. The thought is we've got to keep the noise in there to make it the home field advantage it can be. I'm appreciated this opportunity to talk to you.

I'm so proud to be a part of this. Like I said, I'm thrilled that you're here and the journey starts now with all of this and you as part of the sixty fifteen in our franchise's history. Thank you.