On Thursday, the Cleveland Browns hosted the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Week 12 Thursday Night Football matchup. And on the Amazon Prime Video broadcast of the game, TNF color analyst Kirk Herbstreit shared a rather odd story regarding Browns assistant coach Mike Vrabel.
Vrabel and Herbstreit share the same alma mater, just missing each other in terms of the time they played for the Ohio State Buckeyes. But it turns out, according to Herbstreit on the call of the game, they share even more than that in their personal life, with children around the same age.
In the second quarter of Thursday’s game, Herbstreit told a story about how he “knew Vrabel would be a great NFL coach”, detailing that Vrabel coached up their kindergarten-age sons the same way he coaches NFL players, including the profanities he shouts towards players.
“When I learned Mike Vrabel was a great coach… He just got done winning a Super Bowl, came back to Columbus, my twins and his son Tyler were about the same age. He coached kindergarten football and he talked to them the same way he talks to these Browns players. And I was like, this guy is going to be a great coach. ‘Get your ass over there.’ I mean he was just like… In this politically correct style of coaching. That guy is a football coach.”
Apparently Vrabel coaches kindergarten kids the same way he coaches the Browns, language included https://t.co/kDIrl4mIcS pic.twitter.com/sfvVASI4t2
— CJ Fogler 🫡 (@cjzero) November 22, 2024
Vrabel has indeed proven to be a great NFL coach, most notably getting the Tennessee Titans to the postseason in three of the six seasons he spent with the organization.
However, this story by Herbstreit recounting Vrabel swearing at young children perhaps didn’t come off as endearing as he had probably hoped to some media pundits.
“What the hell was that story Herbstreit just told?” wrote Mike Freeman of USA Today Sports.
What the hell was that story Herbstreit just told
— mike freeman (@mikefreemanNFL) November 22, 2024
“Kirk Herbstreit just said on TNF that Mike Vrabel talked to his kindergarten football players the same way he does the Browns players and if that is actually true this man needs to be in jail cause we know how he talks,” wrote Tyler Rowland, the host of the Locked on Titans podcast.
Kirk Herbstreit just said on TNF that Mike Vrabel talked to his kindergarten football players the same way he does the Browns players and if that is actually true this man needs to be in jail cause we know how he talks lmao pic.twitter.com/Chs9C7NrgE
— TicTacTitans (@TicTacTitans) November 22, 2024
“This is so weird,” wrote Jordan Zirm of Sporting News.
this is so weird https://t.co/OIyszLMoHZ
— Jordan Zirm (@JordanZirm) November 22, 2024
Again, this doesn’t take away from the kind of coach or even the kind of person Vrabel is. But judging someone’s coaching ability by how they talk to kindergarteners in a rather colorful way is certainly a bit of an odd way of assessing things.
