At this point of his career, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown appreciates how Mike Vrabel coached him when they were together on the Tennessee Titans.

But that certainly wasn’t always the case.

“I used to write in my notebook, ’cause at the time I didn’t really like Vrabe. I didn’t really like him, and I admit that, he knows that. So I used to write, ‘I hate Vrabe, I hate Vrabe, I had Vrabe,'” Brown said during an appearance on the Dudes on Dudes podcast with Rob Gronkowski and Julian Edelman (5:45 mark). 

“But I was doing that to pretend like I was taking notes and looking like I was engaged. He was so hard on me when I was a rookie, and I didn’t really understand it. At the time I told Vrabe, I was like, ‘Hey, I’m humble already. You don’t gotta humble me.’ But I really didn’t understand what he was trying to push me to be.”

Vrabel was Brown’s head coach in Tennessee for the first three years of his career from 2019 through 2021 until the Titans traded the wide receiver to the Eagles ahead of the 2022 campaign.

The Ole Miss product finished with more than 1,000 receiving yards in each of his first two seasons, including when he was a Pro Bowler in his second year in the league. The Titans also reached the playoffs in each of their three seasons together.

Tennessee advanced as far as the AFC Championship Game when Brown was a rookie but has not been back to the playoffs since trading Brown.

As for Vrabel, he is now the head coach of the New England Patriots and led the AFC East team to the Super Bowl in his first year in the position. The future is bright with the Vrabel and Drake Maye partnership in New England, and Brown highlighted how his coaching style should help moving forward.

“He holds every single player accountable from top to bottom, I don’t care who it is,” Brown said. “That’s who he is, and it makes the team come together because nobody is bigger than the team and nobody is bigger than the program. So you have to respect it.”

He respects it now, but his notebook would suggest he didn’t always earlier in his career.