NFL insider Ian Rapoport called out former Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Mularkey after Mularkey revealed more than six years after his firing that he fed Rapoport a bogus story to get back at his soon-to-be former employer.
During a recent interview on “The Jaguars Hour with Brent & Austen,” Mularkey confessed that he knew he was about to get fired despite leading the team to its first playoff appearance in nearly a decade.
Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Mularkey smiles on the sideline during an AFC wild-card game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., Jan. 6, 2018. (Imagn)
To get back at the organization, Mularkey called the NFL reporter to plant a fake story that he was instead getting a contract extension despite the widespread belief that he was, in fact, on his way out.
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“He reported it. It was all over the country that I was getting a contract knowing that I was gonna get fired, but I just wanted to see the faces on the owner and the GM, who was out to get me,” Mularkey said.
“When I walked in the next morning, there wasn’t a whole lot of conversation. It was like, ‘All right, you’re done.’”
While Mularkey may have found joy in the moment, Rapoport wasn’t laughing six years later.
NFL reporter Ian Rapoport on the sideline before the Super Bowl at State Farm Stadium Feb. 12, 2023. ( Mark J. Rebilas/USA Today Sports)
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“Those guys, yukking it up — pretty funny, for them, I guess, if you don’t care about accuracy and taking someone’s reputation and rubbing it in the mud,” Rapoport said on the NFL Network Friday.
“Everyone said Mike Mularkey’s a good guy — he always was to me. I liked him. Thought he was very respectable. That is not cool. That’s not funny. I was a younger reporter then, and the amount of online hate and ridicule I got because Mike Mularkey thought it would be funny to get back at his old boss — it was not fun.
“So, I don’t have much to say. I don’t blame Mike Mularkey, but I want to. And that was not cool, and that was not funny. And we should treat truth better than that.”
Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Mularkey, right, watches a play during the first quarter against the New England Patriots in an AFC divisional playoff game at Gillette Stadium Jan. 13, 2018. (Robert Deutsch/USA Today Sports)
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Mularkey took over as head coach in Tennessee halfway through the 2015 season. In his final season with the team, he led the Titans to the playoffs with a 9-7 record. They defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in the wild-card round before being eliminated by the New England Patriots.
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