an interview with Maria Taylor<\/a> that it wasn\u2019t always easy to play for Vrabel when the two were in Tennessee together during Brown\u2019s first three NFL seasons. But Brown came to appreciate the reasons that Vrabel is such a tough coach.<\/p>\n\u201cWhen I first got to Tennessee he was extremely tough on me, and I didn\u2019t really understand what he was trying to do,\u201d Brown said. \u201cObviously he was trying to push me to become the player I am today, but he was just so tough. I remember a conversation, I was talking to him, like, \u2018You don\u2019t have to humble me. I came from humble beginnings.\u2019 I just never understood, he stayed on me all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown said that as he spent more time with Vrabel, he began to learn that Vrabel was hard on him because Vrabel genuinely wanted to get the best out of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was holding me accountable, and we grew close over the years,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
Asked what Vrabel said to him yesterday when the trade became official, Brown said it was something he heard from Vrabel plenty of times in Tennessee.<\/p>\n
\u201cGet open and catch the ball,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThat\u2019s what he always says.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Patriots wide receiver A.J. Brown couldn\u2019t be happier to reunite with head coach Mike Vrabel. Brown said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-680009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}