 In 1994, Floyd Rees was a rookie general manager with the Houston Oilers and he inherited a mess. The NFL had installed a salary cap that year and the Oilers had not prepared for it. Most of the team's best players departed and Rees basically had to start over with the club's personnel. He made a lot of decisions in his first season as a general manager, but the best one might have been choosing Jeff Fisher to be the team's interim head coach and then making him the permanent leader. The Rees-Fisher combination would face challenges, especially a move to Tennessee that took four years to fully complete, but the duo persevered and by the time the Oilers became the Tennessee Titans in 1999, the two men had the franchise ready to go to new heights. Over the next five years, the Titans would win 61 games and made NFL fans of people all over the Mid-South. Tennessee Titans.com senior writer-editor Jim Wyatt covered it all, and he is quick to credit Rees for the talent that he assembled. I think Floyd Rees did a really good job of finding the right players at that time for this organization and God bless him, he did his best to keep that group together as long as he possibly could, you know, restructuring deals, you know, knowing that at some point things were going to have to change, but just look at the long list of players that he brought in here and his impact and keeping those teams together for so long. I mean, Floyd was a football guy and, you know, loved it and, you know, loved the scouting part of it, loved building teams, you know, loved working with Jeff Fisher together. And yes, Jeff Fisher deserves a lot of credit for, you know, the successful run before Rees helped build those teams. I'm very happy he's getting recognized for that. Jeff Fisher has been recognized for the 147 wins that he totaled in his 16-plus years as the franchise's head coach, but Fisher was more than the Titans head coach. He didn't just win games, Fisher dove into Middle Tennessee in a way that no one could have imagined. He became the face of the NFL in the Mid-South. He was out there in the community. He was trying to, you know, generate some buzz with the football team, building a program at the same time. He ended up getting this team to four playoff appearances in five years, two AFC championship games, a Super Bowl, and at the same time, you know, built a fan base that is strong in large part because of the work he did back then. It was a stick-long details and, you know, had people in place that helped him do it, had players in place that had his back at all times, and there was a culture when he was a head coach, certainly during the successful run that wanted to fight for him. He lost Floyd Reese to cancer on August 21st, and everyone is crushed that he won't be there on Sunday to go into the ring of honor with Jeff Fisher. They didn't always agree, but with years of hindsight to draw on, it's apparent that this was a great duo. Floyd Reese and Jeff Fisher made the other better, and in the process made the Titans special. I mean, they had different personalities, and, yeah, maybe they did butt heads on some draft picks and some personnel moves, but, you know, you always got the sense that they were in it together and in it to win together and had each other's back at a time when everybody was trying to, you know, pull the weight the same way. So, you know, I have such good memories of both of those guys, what they did for this organization, what they did for this community, and what they did for the NFL. I'm happy to see them recognized.