National Football League

Why new Titans GM Ran Carthon is the team-builder Tennessee needs

Updated Mar. 9, 2023 6:30 p.m. ET

Ben Troupe felt that his head was too big. Literally.

He had a complex about his head size throughout his childhood. Then in 2000, as a freshman tight end at the University of Florida, the team forced him — all the freshmen — to get crazy haircuts before team pictures. They were so bad that all of them sported bald heads. Troupe arrived at the weight room the next day feeling embarrassed, insecure.

That's when Ran Carthon, a freshman running back for the Gators, saw him. He roasted Troupe. Troupe doesn't even remember Carthon working out that day, but wherever Troupe went in the weight room, Carthon was right behind him.

"He kept saying, ‘Can you spin around for me? Oh my God!'" Troupe recalled to FOX Sports.

Carthon roasted Troupe so long that he started to laugh, to the point where his insecurities about his head went away. He overcame his lifelong complex in the span of a one-hour workout.

Troupe is pretty sure that Carthon, 18 or 19 at the time, wasn't using some kind of psychoanalytic method to help him. He was just being himself, lightening the mood with humor.

"You got to know how to deal with people," said Troupe, who played five NFL seasons, including four with the Titans. "And that's what Ran does."

It's what Carthon will need to continue to do in Nashville, where he's the first Black general manager in Tennessee Titans/Houston Oilers franchise history. He must work in conjunction with coach Mike Vrabel to not only pull the team out of what was a disastrous 2022 — a 7-10 record, including a seven-game skid to end the season — but also to construct a roster that can compete for Super Bowls in the short and long term.

As a first-time GM, Carthon is front and center in a pivotal offseason, with uncertainty surrounding the futures of quarterback Ryan Tannehill and superstar running back Derrick Henry. Star defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons is due for an extension. Carthon's personnel decisions this offseason will be felt in Tennessee for years to come.

"It's going to be a grind," Carthon said at his introductory press conference in January. "It's going to be a process."

To those who have worked with him, Carthon is an authentic communicator who consistently goes above and beyond.

For years, Maryland coach Mike Locksley has leaned on Carthon's scouting expertise. Carthon is often the first person Locksley will reach out to when he needs information on his players who are considering turning pro. The coach doesn't have to follow up on his request. And the feedback he receives on his players has typically been spot-on.

With the 49ers for the past five years, Carton's job titles indicated heavy involvement on the pro side of the scouting department — as director of pro personnel (2017-20) and director of player personnel (2021-22). But he was also active in the college process because San Francisco saw him as "worthy" and felt he made the team better working at that capacity, too, according to general manager John Lynch.

"I can't tell you how many times [I was like], ‘Hey, Ran, I need you to go find this out,'" Lynch said at the NFL Combine last week. "He'd always deliver because people connect with Ran."

When Troupe got cut by the Buccaneers in 2008, he had a workout with the Falcons. Carthon was a pro scout with Atlanta at the time. While the other scouts and coaches were giving him football talk, Troupe felt like Carthon was the one giving him the real. He was honest.

"Listen, Troupe," he said. "It's Thursday. We're not going to pick up a tight end. I wish I could sign you, but it's just too close to game day. I wish you the best."

According to Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, Carthon's former colleague in the 49ers' front office, the new Titans GM is the first person to check on you when something is wrong. Carthon is one of his wife's favorite people. He can hold discussions on various topics, from venture capital to the NBA and pop culture.

"If you don't like Ran, there's something wrong with you," Lions assistant general manager Ray Agnew, who worked with Carthon in the Rams' front office, told FOX Sports.

Carthon has also been known to elevate and empower younger scouts. Adofo-Mensah remembers him speaking the least in meetings so that they could have their shine. When the Rams relocated to Los Angeles in 2016, Carthon — at the time the director of player personnel for the franchise — ran what was called "The Breakfast Club," a weekly Friday-morning session during which he shared knowledge and advice with the team's less experienced personnel folks, according to Rams general manager Les Snead. The Rams didn't ask Carthon to do it.

"The most value that you'll ever create for yourself — and I think he understands this — is by doing something for others or for a cause greater than your own causes," said Locksley, Carthon's running backs coach at Florida in 2003. "To me, he's one of those guys who creates value from doing for others, and that's been Ran from day one."

Joining the Titans, Carthon has taken an approach of humility. He hasn't looked to shake things up with the personnel department. He has been committed to learning the systems already in place and how he can add value to those processes. "It's easier for one person to adjust to a group of 20 to 25 people," he said.

Ran Carthon experienced his first NFL Combine as an NFL GM last week. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

Collaboration will largely define the success (or failure) of his partnership with Vrabel. And Carthon's track record suggests he already embraces its importance.

In San Francisco, he saw it work with Lynch and 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan, who've led the franchise to three NFC conference championship appearances — including a Super Bowl berth — in the past four seasons.

In meetings with the 49ers, when Carthon was the director of player personnel and Adofo-Mensah was the director of football research and development, the latter felt like there was an embrace of each other's perspectives — Carthon from the personnel/scouting side, Adofo-Mensah from the analytics angle — to find a common language.

At his introductory press conference, Carthon gave an example of collaboration at work in San Francisco. Demitrius Washington, the current Vikings vice president of football operations who at the time led the 49ers' analytics department, approached Carthon in 2021 about a running back who, according to analytics, was the best outside-zone back in the upcoming draft: Elijah Mitchell. Carthon agreed with the sentiment after watching the film.

The sixth-round pick used on Mitchell was actually supposed to be used on a linebacker, but then-49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans stumbled upon Mitchell's tape and called the linebackers coach to say he was better than the linebacker they were going to take, according to Carthon.

As a rookie, Mitchell had 207 carries for 963 rushing yards to help lead the 49ers to the NFC Championship Game.

"My stepfather was in the military. I moved around a bunch throughout my life," Carthon explained in January. "So I've always had to be the person to come in and just insert myself into a new culture, learn that new culture and see where I fit. So I feel this is a natural thing for me to do: come in and learn my fit. Over time, I'll establish myself as a leader and help Mike build the team that he wants."

By the end of the 2006 NFL season, Carthon knew his football playing career was over. He'd spent the past two and a half years as a bottom-of-the-roster running back, bouncing between practice squads. He enjoyed a nine-game stint with the Colts from 2005-06. But he wanted in on the personnel side of the sport. So he still accepted workouts with teams in spring of 2007, knowing it was a way to get in front of general managers.

Carthon played for the Colts in 2005 and 2006, getting into nine games. (Photo by Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images)

That's when he met Snead, then working in scouting for the Falcons, in a minicamp tryout. Carthon got his business card. By 2008, he was hired as a Falcons pro scout. The rest is history.

The specifics of that first conversation with Carthon are lost on Snead all these years later, but he was impressed with him — as so many others have come to be.

"From probably that first workout we had, that first interaction, if you could buy stock in people, I would've bought stock in Ran Carthon and said, ‘You know what? I'm not quite sure what he's going to do, but I bet he succeeds,'" Snead said.

Ben Arthur is the AFC South reporter for FOX Sports. He previously worked for The Tennessean/USA TODAY Network, where he was the Titans beat writer for a year and a half. He covered the Seattle Seahawks for SeattlePI.com for three seasons (2018-20) prior to moving to Tennessee. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @benyarthur.

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