NASHVILLE — The lighting inside The Corner Pub is dim enough that it feels like nighttime even when it’s light outside. There is cheap beer, a wide selection of whiskey and a frozen-drink machine churning “Bushwackers,” described as an adult version of a Wendy’s frosty, full of booze. Sports memorabilia covers the walls — jerseys and photos of famous athletes who have come through over the years, like the late Steve McNair, the city’s first NFL star who used to call the bar’s owner after games to make sure it would stay open for him. A red No. 94 Ohio State jersey hangs over one of the corner tables.

On a Thursday night in August, the pub was packed with regulars and the TVs lining the bar showed an NFL preseason game. After a round of golf, Mike Vrabel took an Uber, walked through the parking lot and came in through the back entrance. He went right to that corner table beneath the Ohio State jersey, his jersey. His golf buddies, whom he met here a couple of years ago, were already waiting for him, light beers in hand.

For the next few hours Vrabel talked and laughed, and didn’t move from his seat. He remains one of the most recognizable faces in a town known for country music stars (Post Malone was at The Corner Pub the week before). Vrabel is beloved for coaching the Tennessee Titans to the AFC Championship Game in the 2019 season and helping build a winner despite an imperfect roster. But on this night, The Corner Pub’s patrons mostly left him alone, giving him space to enjoy beers and meatballs — the pub is known for those — with his buddies. Aside from a chat with the bar’s owner and his son, only one other person, stumbling, approached Vrabel, simply to let him know the Titans made a mistake firing him months earlier. Vrabel smiled and thanked him.

“I was born for bars like this,” he said later.

For Vrabel, this was a day off from his consulting job with the Cleveland Browns, an endeavor he took after he didn’t land another head-coaching job. Five months later, he is the most coveted candidate of this hiring cycle.

A flurry of interviews awaits, but Vrabel spent this week at his home in Park City, Utah, celebrating the New Year with his family, watching college football and remaining unbothered by the stress of what’s next. The Browns permitted Vrabel to leave with one game left in the regular season, giving him a head start on interviews with teams that already have job openings: The Jets, Saints and Bears, with others soon to come when the regular season ends.

Over the last five months, The Athletic spent extensive time with Vrabel as he worked for the Browns, and worked to create a vision for what his next head-coaching job would look like. He reflected on his time with the Titans, particularly the day it ended, and sized up what he believes is an inaccurate perception many around the league hold of him: a hard-ass, and hard to work with. It’s a challenge to overcome, though it won’t change Vrabel.

“I do love what I heard one time,” Vrabel said: “What somebody thinks of me is none of my business.”

In late August, Vrabel walked up to his favorite diner in Nashville, two cups of Starbucks in hand — one, a quad espresso, for him, and the other for the journalist spending the day with him. Vrabel wakes up at 4:30 most mornings to work out and, as far as he’s concerned, diner coffee won’t get him through the day. When he was informed outside beverages weren’t allowed, he chugged his cup, tossed the other and made his way to a corner booth.

Vrabel was on a break from his duties with the Browns, returning to Nashville for a few days to finalize the sale of his home — he and his wife, Jen, downsized but stayed in town — and, of course, to golf. His phone buzzed throughout breakfast, calls from contractors and inspectors and also Browns colleagues, including tight ends coach Tommy Rees.

Along the way, he shook hands with a few people dining at the restaurant, locals he’s gotten to know over six years in Tennessee. He rested his arms on the back of the booth, took a breath, and told a story about how he recently met a fan who didn’t realize he’d been fired and asked Vrabel how the team was going to be in 2024.

His response was playful but dry: “I couldn’t give two s—s.”

Vrabel was called into Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk’s office on Tuesday, Jan. 9, last year. Team president Burke Nihill was there too. The late-morning meeting was brief, lasting maybe two minutes — Vrabel didn’t have any interest in lingering. He was fired. He asked Strunk to give him an hour to clear out his desk and to address his staff; the owner gave him the OK.

Vrabel gathered more than 20 coaches, the group cramming into a small room at the Titans’ facility. One by one, holding back tears, he told each person how much they meant to him. He told tight ends coach Tony Dews he wished Dews’ four daughters could have finished up their school in one spot. He told defensive coordinator Shane Bowen how much he was going to miss his family, and thanked him for all he’d done for the defense. He told defensive line coach Terrell Williams he was hoping to see Williams’ son graduate from high school and to attend more of his hockey games, and he thanked him for teaching Vrabel how to better connect with his players.

“He had a story for everyone,” Williams said.

“It was off-script and from the heart,” said John Streicher, the team’s director of football administration. “He took a hard day for himself and for everyone else and made everyone feel comfortable and loved, like everything was gonna be OK.”

Vrabel called it “pure instinct.”

“I obviously didn’t plan on being fired,” Vrabel said. “But I had a lot of close, personal relationships with the men and women in that room. I hired them, I know their families. They gave a lot for us, and I wanted to recognize what they’d done for us, what they meant to me and how I’ve seen them grow as people, or coaches, or watched their kids grow up, for goodness sakes.”

Vrabel’s Titans were considered overachievers during his six seasons. Coaches and players point to an approach built around week-to-week adaptability and attention to the smallest details. There were “teach tape” meetings — a look at how penalties were called and mistakes were made by other teams — on Friday, and officiating-crew deep dives on Saturday. “He always would say going into games: I want you physically and mentally exhausted by the end of the week by how hard we worked in practice and how much we put into the game plan,” former Titans center Ben Jones said. “And I would be absolutely braindead by Sunday.”

Every week Vrabel identified three keys to victory, emphasizing specific statistical targets (for instance: turnover differential, total rushing attempts or points allowed) depending on the opponent. Jones estimated that if the Titans hit their three keys, they won 90 percent of the time.

Vrabel would get to the facility early in the morning to work out and, for hours, camp outside the training room. If a player didn’t show up for treatment on time, he’d call them to “make sure they had a great morning,” Jones said, laughing.

The emphasis on accountability stretched from the practice squad up to the team’s biggest stars. Vrabel was unafraid to call out A.J. Brown or Jeffery Simmons or Derrick Henry in front of the entire team. There was candor — brutal at times. Not everyone appreciated it, and Vrabel admits that, at times, he focused too much on the things players were doing wrong, instead of highlighting the things they were doing right. But most of the Titans locker room understood where he was coming from.

Said cornerback Caleb Farley, a Titans first-round pick in 2021: “Something coach Vrabes taught me was it doesn’t matter what car you pull in on Sundays. It just matters if you’re gonna hit somebody in their mouth. Football is a grown man’s business. It’s a nasty business. There’s no room to be sensitive.”

Despite a roster that was middling at best, the Titans went 9-7 in Vrabel’s first year and narrowly missed the playoffs. The next year they went 9-7 again, this time not only making the postseason but also going on a surprise run to the AFC title game after upsetting the Patriots and Ravens (they lost to Kansas City in the conference title game). They went 11-5 in 2020 and 12-5 in ’21 — then things changed. In 2022, general manager Jon Robinson traded Brown, an All-Pro, to Philadelphia and didn’t adequately replace him. Injuries struck and the depth wasn’t there; the Titans lost seven straight games to end the season, during which Robinson was fired.

Vrabel preferred interim GM Ryan Cowden take over for Robinson to maintain continuity, but Strunk “wanted to go in a new direction,” Vrabel said, adding: “I was looking for a sound structure with a clear vision, open dialogue and communication.” The Titans owner hired Ran Carthon from the 49ers and fired Cowden after the 2023 draft. Vrabel appeared to still be a part of the franchise’s long-term plans heading into 2023, but the Titans struggled to a 6-11 season, after which Strunk decided it was time to move on.

Vrabel interviewed for a few head coaching jobs. He felt like he would have landed the Chargers gig if not for that franchise’s connection to Jim Harbaugh. It never felt like he had a real shot at the Falcons job, and he wasn’t especially interested in coaching the Panthers. But he felt there was a persistent line of questioning throughout those interviews, touching on a perception that he doesn’t collaborate well with owners and general managers.

“I care about the team. No job is too small for me or anybody else to help the team win,” Vrabel said. “I feel like I can work with anybody. I feel like winning is the ultimate goal and I — just like our team — have got to be willing to adjust and adapt to things that are going on.

“But I believe that I can respectfully disagree, have a conversation and move on and get past it. I’m also not afraid to share my opinion and what I believe in, my convictions about things that relate to helping a football team win, building a team or helping players, helping scouts. I love when coaches and scouts get together post-draft, I love collaborating with the general manager on inactives (on game day). I tried to incorporate that system into Tennessee because it’s something that I embraced and loved about what we did in Houston. It’s a unique relationship (coach and GM), one that has to remain respectful at all times. I think that it always was. Are we going to disagree? Yeah, I hope that we do so that we can grow. But ultimately, somebody’s gotta be in charge.”

Vrabel rented a different car each time he flew into Ohio this season, but lived out of the same room at a Residence Inn — “Resi Inn,” as he calls it — a couple miles down the road from the Browns facility in Berea. He got to know the hotel staffers, and every morning they had a coffee, with extra shots of espresso, waiting for him. A mile down the road is one of Vrabel’s favorite haunts, named, fittingly, Mike’s Bar and Grill.

On a Wednesday night in November, he popped in to grab a bite to eat. Vrabel sat down, leaned his 6-foot-4, 260-pound frame against the back of one chair and propped his feet up on the seat of another, jet-lagged after a 10-day excursion to Italy with Jen to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary during the Browns’ bye week. It was his first true vacation … maybe ever. And it will probably be his last for a while.

“To me,” Browns coach Kevin Stefanski said in November, “it’s insane that he’s not a head coach.”

The prospect of taking a year off never crossed Vrabel’s mind. Some teams were interested in bringing him on as a defensive coordinator but he wasn’t into that idea. He could have taken a consulting job at the University of Wisconsin under Luke Fickell, his college roommate, but he wasn’t eager to leave the NFL orbit. Vrabel considered overtures to work in media, “but that wasn’t a direction I wanted to head into yet” (he added he’s open to the idea of media work down the line).

“I was as surprised as anybody when he didn’t get a job,” Stefanski said, “so I reached out and said: What’s your plan here? Are you going to go sit on the couch for a year? If you know Vrabes, he has so much energy. You can only ski so much, right?”

Browns GM Andrew Berry viewed it as a unique opportunity to bring in someone of Vrabel’s stature to enhance their player-development program while helping in other areas; Berry and Stefanski put on the full-court press to recruit him. Vrabel didn’t have a relationship with either man outside of interactions at league meetings — which actually made it more appealing. It was an opportunity to spend the year learning from an analytically minded organization that does things a little differently from what he was used to, and a chance to stay in the NFL and keep an eye on how other teams around the league (especially the ones with potential job openings) were going about their business. Add in that he’d be returning to Northeast Ohio, where he grew up, and the fit was right.

He joined the Browns in March, though his position was not quite a full-time coaching role, giving him the freedom to spend more time with Jen (“We find ourselves missing each other when we’re not together,” Vrabel said) and to fly to Park City, Utah, where he also owns a house, to ski and celebrate holidays with his wife and two sons. He’d sometimes pop over for dinner at his parents’ house, a 30-minute drive from the Browns’ facility — one night in training camp, his mom gave him two cakes, carrot and red velvet, to bring to the facility — and on off days he’d often fly back to Nashville.

At the start of the season, Vrabel was working primarily with tight ends while helping Stefanski and Berry in other areas. The original plan was for Vrabel to spend most of the week with the team for home gamedays and fly back to Nashville or Park City when the team played on the road, still helping out with game-planning and watching film on a laptop plugged directly into the Browns’ network. He was in a group text with the team’s tight ends and he’d communicate throughout the week when he was out of town, especially after games on Sunday.

Vrabel was excited to be part of a team, though he admitted it was a strange feeling gearing up for Sundays.

“I kind of miss being there,” Vrabel said in August. “Yeah, you’re doing some stuff for them remotely, but you miss being around the guys, you miss the connection about being with the players and the young coaches. (Week 1 was) the first time I haven’t been on the sidelines since before I got to high school.”

During the weeks in Ohio, Vrabel routinely drove to the facility and worked out with the training staff, often before sunrise. For a stretch, Browns head trainer Joe Sheehan wasn’t working out with them, so Vrabel started bombarding him with playful texts and selfies with the staff, enough to shame Sheehan into eventually joining them. Somehow — perhaps it’s those quad espressos — Vrabel was still raring to go for practices in the afternoon.

For one November workout, the Browns were forced inside because of rain. When they’re indoors, the practice area shrinks, making it easier for Vrabel to roam around. If coaching consultants are supposed to stand in the corner and observe practice, Vrabel didn’t get that memo. As players started to stretch, Vrabel, wearing a Browns polo and shorts, skipped through the crowd — joyful, a man in his element. He’d periodically stop to chat, or to pat a player or two on the back. He stopped to talk to an assistant coach, and then, briefly, Stefanski. He walked over to a practice-squad defensive lineman, got in a three-point stance and showed him pass-rushing moves.

When Vrabel finally reached the opposite sideline, he picked up a red pinny with the No. 56 and joined the offensive linemen for the start of individual drills. “It’s third down!” he called, then lined up as an edge rusher, the only one not wearing a helmet. He got into a pass-rushing stance and went at center Ethan Pocic. And then tackle Jedrick Wills. On one play, Wills nearly shoved him to the ground but Vrabel kept his feet. Later, Vrabel lined up as a linebacker and nearly was trampled by a group of offensive linemen.

“This guy is going to get hurt,” said Joel Bitonio, the Browns’ longtime guard, with a laugh.

Vrabel, sans helmet, wasn’t shy about jumping into the fray during live practice drills. (Zack Rosenblatt / The Athletic)

Berry didn’t know what he was going to get when the Browns brought Vrabel into the fold, or how often he’d even be around. But it clicked for Berry during OTAs, sitting in his office overlooking the practice field, watching Vrabel, drenched in sweat, racing Browns quarterback Jameis Winston from end to end at every practice.

“Anyone who asks me (about Vrabel), I would give this visual of him sprinting with the quarterbacks,” Berry said. “He’s doing it for the pure, unbridled joy of coaching football and teaching. I think that is unique and special.”

Berry leaned on Vrabel, hired both for his personnel and coaching acumen, during both the free agency and draft processes, particularly the latter. And Vrabel found that process — seeing how Berry prepared for the draft — to be educational. Vrabel said he was permitted to read the way Browns scouts and talent evaluators wrote their scouting reports, how they incorporated analytics and how Berry “asked questions that would create some critical thinking for coaches.” Berry gave Vrabel a list of prospects to study and asked Vrabel his opinion on how he would approach certain parts of the evaluation process. Berry also included Vrabel on some of the Top-30 visits, when prospects come to the team facility for interviews and evaluations.

“The stuff that he did wasn’t just: What do you think about this guy?” Vrabel said. “There were more thought-provoking questions: What one skill are you most excited to work with about this player? What’s one skill that you’re most excited to try and develop in this player? I like that instead of him simply reading the (scouting) report on the computer.”

Berry thought Vrabel was an “excellent” addition to the draft room and was moved by his willingness to collaborate. “He has the big-picture perspective,” Berry said. “I think it’s not only sitting in the head-coaching seat, but as someone who’s had to recruit in college (at Ohio State), a former player, a successful defensive coordinator in the NFL — I think the mosaic of those experiences has really suited him well.”

As for the perception that Vrabel is difficult to work with: “He has been a phenomenal partner in every area,” Berry said. “Working with everyone from Kevin to our QCs (quality control assistants). Look, you want people who have strong opinions, but you also want people who can develop good working partnerships and be collaborative, and I would absolutely put Mike in that bucket.”

When tight end Blake Whiteheart was on the practice squad at the start of the season, he said Vrabel would meet him (and other practice squaders) at the facility on off-days to watch film. They’d work on things like run-blocking techniques too.

“He’s the same person every single day,” Whiteheart said. “He’s gonna try to make you the best player you can be. You can tell that because of how much time he spends with everybody — like, he spends time with me, I’m undrafted and he sees value in that.”

Midway through the season, Vrabel switched from tight ends to the offensive line room after talking with Stefanski, feeling like he could be more useful with a larger group of players. Quickly, he bonded with second-year offensive tackle Dawand Jones. Vrabel was instrumental in building up Jones’s confidence. Jones has struggled with weight at times (he’s listed at 6-foot-8 and 374 pounds) and Vrabel made it a point to get Jones (and his coaches) to celebrate small victories, like when Jones lost 11 pounds one week.

“Nobody’s going to develop in anything they do without some small victories along the way,” Vrabel said.

Vrabel hadn’t been traveling for road games, but Jones asked him if he’d start coming — with Stefanski’s permission, Vrabel agreed. “Dawand was really working hard and trying to change some behaviors and work on himself,” Vrabel said. “I felt like I had made a commitment (to him) and wanted to be involved.” (Jones fractured his ankle in Week 11 but Vrabel kept going to the road games.)

On gameday, Vrabel wore a headset and could listen to coaches but wasn’t involved with play-calling outside of offering Stefanski the occasional opinion or assisting coaches on the sideline. He acted as a hype man, for offense and defense, in between plays, and usually helped coach up offensive linemen during pre-game warmups. It was in those moments, and watching him on the practice field, that Stefanski came to a realization about Vrabel.

“He likes being around here, we like having him around,” Stefanski said. “Sometimes I’ll look over and Vrabes is playing as the defensive tackle on our scout team and our guards are putting their hands on him and moving him. So I’m thinking to myself: What the f— else would you be doing with your life right now?”

Vrabel doesn’t have a good answer to that question.

“’I’ve only had three jobs in my life,” Vrabel said. “I caddied and carried golf bags in high school, I played football and I coach football. I’m not cut out to do much more.”

Vrabel has spent the past year really considering what he wants out of his next head-coaching job, the kind of coach he wants to be, and what he wants out of the organization that hires him. His season away helped to crystalize his priorities. As always, he broke it down into three keys: Ownership, collaboration, quarterback.

“There’s got to be clear communication with ownership, so that we understand as coaches what the expectations are,” Vrabel said. “That’s so we can explain to them what’s reasonable, what we can do, what we probably can do and what we’re going to try to do — or die trying. I want to have a structure in place that people see the game the same way I do from an X’s and O’s standpoint, from a personnel standpoint, with team-building. We would hopefully have that alignment, which is critical.

“And I would like to be able to say that there’s a quarterback that you feel like you can win with — or that there’s a path to find the one that you can win with.”

In late October, Vrabel took his seat in a crowded New York City restaurant, in town to meet up with some NFL friends. He leaned back into the booth to take up less space at an already-cramped table. He indulged in pasta as wandering eyes began to stare. A man in a Jets hat, dining with his girlfriend, drank a glass of wine and, eventually, mustered up the courage to slide across the booth, putting him by Vrabel’s side.

He asked for a photo; Vrabel obliged.

“Where are you gonna go next?” the man asked. “You gonna come to the Jets?”

Vrabel smiled.

“We’ll see in January.”

Brent Keally and Kent McMillin are regulars at The Corner Pub. In 2019, Vrabel and Jen had stopped in to watch March Madness games. Keally had a table reserved (in the corner, of course) and spotted the coach looking for somewhere to sit in the crowded bar. Keally offered the Vrabels a seat; the group became fast friends.

Vrabel with golfing buddies Kent McMillin (in red hat) and Brent Keally at his Patriots Ring of Honor ceremony in 2023 (left), and back at his home table at Nashville’s Corner Pub. (Zack Rosenblatt / The Athletic)

They golfed that Sunday and then, on average, about four times a week throughout his time with the Titans, McMillin said — and now every time he flies back to Nashville. Over his six years with the Titans, Keally and McMillin would attend most Titans games as Vrabel’s guests, and they knew not to bother him after Wednesday night, when game prep intensified. They accompanied Vrabel to the NFL Honors in Los Angeles in 2021 when he won Coach of the Year, and to New England last year when the Patriots put him in the Ring of Honor for his tenure as a Pro Bowl linebacker and a part of three Super Bowl winners.

“Everybody else sees him as a guy who blows off people at press conferences,” McMillin said. “But that’s not Mike. Mike is closely vested. And then when he feels comfortable, he opens up. He keeps that circle tight and small.”

Last January, less than a week after Vrabel had been fired, the trio was back at The Corner Pub. Vrabel was at his table, laughing with his buddies, drinking Miller Lite. His friends were stunned when Vrabel didn’t land a head coaching job last offseason, but they never worried about him, because Vrabel wasn’t worried. It’s January — we’re about to see why.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos: Wesley Hitt / Getty Images, Nick Cammett / Diamond Images / Getty Images)