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NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Titans’ general manager Ran Carthon has done a lot of speaking at the 2023 NFL Combine and among all the things he has discussed, the most interesting may be a nugget he dropped about new Titans’ assistant general manager Chad Brinker. Brinker seems to be an incredibly smart man who has created his own ways to track and analyze injuries and contracts.

Carthon spoke on the Tennessee Titans’ official website about what impresses him about Brinker and why Carthon choose to bring Brinker onto his staff in Nashville. Brinker was the first known move that Carthon made in the front office and it appears to have been a worthy move. Carthon broke down some of Brinker’s genius with a story about Brinker’s development.

“Chad won’t talk about himself, so I’ll talk about him in this moment,” Carthon began. “He’s a guy that Green Bay thought enough of to pay for him to get his executive MBA from Northwestern, right. So, not only does he go and get his MBA, but through the course of getting his MBA he meets with some guys who are in the tech space and he creates his own AI(Artificial Intelligence) model for injuries and cap studies.”

Quite impressive stuff and music to the ears of Titans’ fans everywhere. Especially, when you consider the Titans were consistently ranked the least analytically advanced in NFL under former general manager Jon Robinson. To have someone in the organization that not only understands and incorporates analytics into the roster building process, but to have someone who literally creates the models personally is a very welcome change of direction. Carthon spoke more about how Brinker’s creations can now help the Titans even more because he owns the intellectual property(IP).

Carthon explained, “So, he figures out a way to create these models that he owns the IP for and so, where ever he goes, he can bring that IP with him. And again, allows us to grow in a space that we are trying to evolve to, which is in the analytics department. You know, so he brings that vast, I have an understanding of analytics because coming from where I’m coming from, but he is on another level than I am. And so, that is an area where he is going to be a strength to our organization.”

Brinker sounds like he is exactly what the organization needs to modernize its use of data and hearing Carthon admit that Brinker is on another level with data use shows a humility and self-awareness that should make Titans’ fans optimistic about the direction of the franchise going forward.

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