AJ Brown used to hate Mike Vrabel when he played for the coach.
Brown was drafted in the second round by the Tennessee Titans in 2019. Vrabel was in his second season as the Titans’ head coach at the time, and according to Brown, Vrabel was hard on the wide receiver. Brown was a guest on the “Dudes On Dudes” podcast with Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski for an interview that was published on Thursday. In the interview, Brown admitted that he initially hated Vrabel because the coach was so tough on him.
“Vrabe is the type of coach that he’s going to call on you in the meetings,” Brown said. “He wants to make sure you’re staying engaged and he’s going to go over the keys to victory of the week. You better know them by the back of your hand. I used to write in my notebook because at the time, I really didn’t like Vrabes. I didn’t like him, and I admit that he knows that. So, I used to write, ‘I hate Vrabes, I hate Vrabes, I hate Vrabes.’ I was doing that to pretend like I was taking notes to look like I was engaged.”
Brown says that Vrabel was hard on him because he was trying to push the wide receiver to be his best.
“But because he was so hard on me when I was a rookie and I really didn’t understand it. So, at the time I told Vrabes like, ‘Hey, like I’m humble already. You don’t got to humble me.’ But I really didn’t understand what he was trying to, you know, push me to be,” Brown said.
Brown then recalled a time when Vrabel picked on him over his effort on a play.
“Another little quick thing, he showed a clip and I ran like a bang-8 [route], and I scored and he praised me. So, I was kind of feeling good about myself, right? I’m a rookie and a couple of plays later, he showed me another play with the bang-8, and I get tackled. He was like, ‘What’s the difference between the first play and the second play?’ And he was like, ‘You’re tired.’ He was like, ‘That’s not going to cut it.’ He like, ‘That same mentality that you showed on the first play, you should do that all the time. That’s who you are. Like this right here, that’s not going to cut it.’ When I say he holds every single player accountable from top to bottom, I don’t care who it is, like that’s who he is. And it makes the team come together because nobody is bigger than the team. Nobody is bigger than the program, so you have to respect it,” Brown said, via NFL.com.
Brown talking about his relationship with Vrabel is interesting because of what it could mean. Brown spent the first three seasons of his career with Tennessee before being traded to the Eagles. He won a Super Bowl with the Eagles but has since become a problem, and seems to want out. Some people have connected him to the Patriots, which are coached by Vrabel. Could the two men be ready for a reunion?
Brown had 1,003 receiving yards and 7 touchdowns in 15 games last season. His production has been solid, but not the same as when he posted consecutive 1,400-yard seasons in his first two years with the Eagles.
