Titans’ GM Ran Carthon Adds Exciting Sidekick Chad Brinker to Front Office

The Tennessee Titans continue making big moves as new general manager Ran Carthon hires former Packers’ executive Chad Brinker as assistant general manager.

The Tennessee Titans continue to make big changes from the coaching staff all the way to the front office. Newly hired GM Ran Carthon has found his right-hand man. Formerly of the Green Bay Packers, Chad Brinker will now join the Titans’ organization as the assistant general manager. Brinker has a long history of work in the NFL at multiple levels and looks to be an excellent addition to the Titans’ executive team.

Source: The Titans are hiring Packers personnel/football admin. exec Chad Brinker as their new assistant GM. Brinker's got an incredibly diverse skill set, and has been on our future GM list the last two years.

He'll be part of a Cleveland-like model under new GM Ran Carthon.

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) February 8, 2023

Who is Chad Brinker? Amusingly enough, Brinker is also a former collegiate running back like Carthon. He played college ball at Ohio University before heading to the NFL as an undrafted free agent. As with Carthon, his NFL dream died as a player rather quickly, but it led Brinker into a career in football operations.

Brinker joined the Green Bay Packers in 2010 as an assistant scout and worked his way up the ladder from there. Becoming a Pro Scout in 2012 before eventually becoming an assistant director of pro personnel in 2018. In that role, he was also considered a salary cap analyst which is a skillset the Titans will certainly want to take advantage of when you look at the financial situation the roster is in.

Prior to the 2021 season, Brinker took a major step on his career journey when he was promoted to Personnel/Football Administrative Executive, a role he has been in for the last two seasons. According to the Packers, that role entailed “directing the pro personnel department, executing the team’s strategy in unrestricted free agency and undrafted free agency while conducting year-round analysis of talent on other NFL rosters.”

Brinker was also tasked with scouting future opponents, managing free agent visits/tryouts and keeping an eye on all NFL transactions. Brinker worked directly with Packers’ GM Brian Gutekunst to “incorporate long-range planning processes in areas such as player contract research, salary cap administration, roster management and day-to-day operations of the player personnel department.”

Brinker clearly has a depth of experience in the pro personnel side of the football operation, but also handled some college scouting related duties as well. Also, according to the Packers, Brinker was responsible for “making 10-15 college visits each fall and attending college all-star games and pro days to evaluate draft-eligible prospects.”

Brinker has all the tools you need to be a general manager himself and has routinely showed up on lists of top candidates over the last few seasons. While he can utilize all these tools, it seems that he has a strong sense of how to manage the salary cap above all else. At one point during his tenure in Green Bay, Brinker was requested by the New England Patriots with the idea Brinker would lead their ‘salary-cap operation,’ but the Packers valued Brinker so much they blocked the interview and promoted him instead. 

Brinker is so highly regarded as an executive(especially with cap logistics) that the Packers blocked an interview attempt by the Patriots. #Titans pic.twitter.com/zkkkj4S1ER

— TicTacTitans (@TicTacTitans) February 8, 2023

Brinker will now be joining a Titans’ front office that is in transition. When Carthon was hired, all indications were that he would retain the current football operations staff until after this year’s NFL Draft, as is customary, but it looks like Carthon didn’t want to wait to get one of “his guys” in the building. According to reports, Brinker will be in charge of football operations and strategy. Which will have a heavy focus on analytics. This should be a breath of fresh air for Titans fans. 

What I meant on Cleveland-like model (which is based on Philly's model)—having a football ops/strategy exec and a scouting exec leading departments and reporting directly to the GM. Brinker would be the former.

More on him in my Future GMs column. 👇https://t.co/xifyYTBIaY

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) February 8, 2023

Brinker has done everything you could possibly do in the football operations world and hopefully he can help the Titans get back to their winning ways before eventually getting a general manager job of his own.