How did Ian Rapoport take hearing that he was an unwitting middleman in a joke played by former Tennessee Titans coach Mike Mularkey? He didn’t like it.
On Friday’s episode of The Insiders on the NFL Network, Rapoport discussed what happened.
“After the 2017 season, in the 2018 playoffs, I reported a couple different times that the Titans were expected to fire Mike Mularkey. And then I got a tip from a very trusted and reliable source that he was actually getting a contract extension after a playoff run. I reported it — he was fired the next day. It has been one of the biggest mysteries of my entire career. And now, it has been solved.”
The Insiders then aired a recent interview Mularkey did on The Jaguars Hour with Brent & Austen. During the interview, Mularkey revealed that after his team’s Divisional Round loss to the New England Patriots in January of 2018, he was called in for a Monday meeting with his bosses. Knowing that he was going to get fired and feeling that the team’s owner and general manager were “out to get” him, Mularkey played a joke on them by calling Rapoport on Sunday to tell them he was getting a contract extension — wanting to see their reactions.
After hearing the clip, Rapoport responded.
“Those guys, yukking it up — pretty funny, for them, I guess,” Rapoport said. “If you don’t care about accuracy and taking someone’s reputation and rubbing it in the mud. 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. That was not cool and that was not funny. And we should treat truth better than that.”
Years ago, Mike Mularkey thought it would be funny to lie to me to get back at his #Titans bosses. It was not funny.
With one of the biggest mysteries of my career solved, I responded on The Insiders. pic.twitter.com/chrJll1T6b
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) November 23, 2024
Rapoport’s perspective may not have been considered enough by Mularkey. Because while it was meant to be a joke on his bosses, the backlash of the joke fell far more onto Rapoport. At the very least, it could have been something that Mularkey publicly owned and acknowledged a lot sooner. A coaching equivalent would be calling a play, having the players ignore the call and do something entirely different and then getting blamed when the play failed.
Rapoport’s co-host Mike Garafolo largely backed up Rapoport’s take. He did, however, talk about it as a learning experience.
“I agree with you,” Garafolo said. “I also think that Ian has learned lessons — we’ve all learned lessons along the way. But modern-day Ian would not have fallen victim to that. You learn hard lessons along the way. That was one of them. Yeah. Not cool. I get it.”
“Supposed to be a trusted source,” Rapoport added.
As Rapoport and Garafolo were talking, fellow co-host Tom Pelissero was generally smiling, seemingly finding the story more entertaining than Garafolo and especially Rapoport.
Pelissero then explained why.
“See I’m sitting here and I’m like biting my lip. Because you’re right. Not cool. Don’t do that. Don’t lie to reporters; don’t make them look bad. But it happened to Ian. So like, it’s a little funny. It’s one of those things. We got enough distance now, it’s been like six years. It’s a tiny bit funny.”
“Maybe now,” Rapoport replied.
[Ian Rapoport on X, Photo Credit: NFL Network/The Insiders]
