Yahoo Finance Titans coordinator apologizes for yelling at rookie after wife scolds him
Football coaches yell. It’s part of their DNA, for most of them anyway.
Players get used to it. It tapers off as you move up the ranks — you don’t see professionals getting chewed out every day — but NFL players hear an earful too at times. It’s part of the game.
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What you don’t see often is a coach apologizing for yelling at a player in practice. But Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Arthur Smith felt bad about yelling at one of the team’s rookies. Especially after Smith’s wife did her own yelling.
Arthur Smith yells at a rookie
On the first day of Titans camp, rookie receiver A.J. Brown slipped while making a catch and Smith wasn’t happy, Erik Bacharach of The Tennessean wrote.
“Finish!” Smith yelled, according to Bacharach. “Stop (expletive) falling down and finish!”
Standard stuff really. If you’ve been to a football practice, you’ve heard something similar.
But Brown actually hurt his hamstring on the play, Brown said. And Smith’s wife got on him for yelling at the rookie who just got injured.
“I felt like a jerk for that,” Smith said, according to The Tennessean. “I didn’t know. I apologized to A.J.”
Hey, it happens.
Smith apologized a ‘couple of times’
Brown confirmed that Smith had offered an apology or two.
“He apologized a couple of times. He felt bad for that one,” Brown told The Tennessean. “He’s a great guy and he was just apologizing, saying he said he didn’t know what happened.”
Smith is a first-time coordinator replacing Matt LaFleur, who left to become the Green Bay Packers head coach. He told The Tennessean he was getting on Brown because he wanted to set a tone with the rookie and he probably crossed the line, especially considering Brown was hurt.
“If I had known he was hurt, I would not have gone over to do that,” Smith told Bacharach. “As soon as I realized it, I felt awful, so I walked over and said something and then I walked to the training room and apologized to him and I told him that. My wife gave me an earful about it, too.”
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Frank Schwab is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab
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