The NFL can be a cruel business, so it's hard to blame people for having a little fun on their way out.
That's exactly what former Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Mularkey did before he was fired after the 2018 playoff loss to the New England Patriots, apparently. According to Mularkey himself, he told one of the country's top insiders in NFL Network's Ian Rapoport that he was going to receive a new contract when in reality, he knew current controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk and former general Jon Robinson were going to fire him, instead.
"The best thing I did there at the end, which I can now talk about, was when I got called in that Monday morning after the New England game. I knew they were going to fire me," Mularkey said on Action Sports Jax's Brent & Austen. "So Sunday night, I called Ian Rapoport, and I said, 'Hey, I don't know if you know this, but I'm going to break it to you - I'm getting a new contract in the morning.'
"And he reported that. It was all over the country [that] I was getting [a] contract, knowing that I was going to get fired, but I just want to see the faces on the owner and the GM who was out to get me. And I'm pretty sure I got him for for a minute or two. When I walked in the next morning, there wasn't a whole lot of conversation."
The momentum for the Titans' decision began in December of the 2017 season, when the team lost back-to-back contests to the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers. After the Titans eventually made the playoffs, Rapoport himself reported that a loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Wildcard Round would likely mean the end of Mularkey's tenure as head coach.
Tennessee went on to beat Kansas City in surprising fashion before falling in ugly fashion to New England the next week. After that, the Titans reportedly wanted Mularkey to fire then-offensive coordinator Terry Robiskie, but Mularkey refused to do so.
The rest is history, as they say. It's also objectively funny knowing that Mularkey got to at least control some of the narrative, ultimately, regardless of context.
