The Tennessee Titans signing Calvin Ridley was a fast-moving process, and so much so that owner Amy Adams Strunk found out about it through the media before general manager Ran Carthon could tell her about it.
Carthon said he kept his boss in the loop about the team targeting Ridley, but news of the signing broke before he could tell Adams Strunk it was official.
“To show you how this world works now, we get the deal done, the deal gets agreed to,” Carthon explained. “So, we’re in the office, we’re having a moment, and in this particular moment, it was myself, it was (assistant GM) Chad (Brinker), it was (head coach Brian Callahan) and (offensive coordinator) Nick Holz.
“So, we’re high-fiving and bro-hugging and doing all that, and so we’re like, ‘hey, let’s get Calvin on the phone, let’s congratulate him.’ So — literally, this is all happening within 90 seconds — we call Calvin, we’re FaceTiming him and we’re excited and he’s excited and then my phone beeps and it’s Mrs. Amy. And I pick up the phone and I’m like, ‘Hello,’ and she’s like, ‘Is this true?’ And I’m like, ‘Is what true?’ And she was like, ‘Did we just get Calvin Ridley?’ And I’m like, what the hell? Is it out already? We’re on the phone with him right now, congratulating him that we got this done.”
Carthon added that, at first, signing Ridley was a “pipe dream” but became possible once re-signing Denico Autry and Azeez Al-Shaair didn’t happen.
