Former NFL player Charlie Rogers, who is now a coach for the Matawan American Youth Football organization, left a disturbing voicemail on a parent of an 11-year-old player’s phone.  

The 42-year-old coach threatens to come after the kid on every play until he’s out of the game, because the kid left his team to play for another team.

Youth football in New Jersey is apparently very important to middle-aged men.  

Rogers will definitely be removed from coaching youth sports, right?  Not so fast.  Rogers is also the offensive coordinator at St. John Vianney High School and head coach is Joe Martucci and he is on the Matawan AYF’s board of directors.  

Martucci has an interesting take on the voicemail, via USA Today Sports:

St. John Vianney head coach Joe Martucci is on Matawan AYF’s board of directors and was the longtime head coach at Matawan, where Rogers played for and coached under him. He indicated that the whole thing “got blown way out of proportion.”

Threatening to injure an 11-year-old kid got blown out of proportion?  It might be time to have Rogers step away from the youth game and someone should probably take a look at what’s going down at St. John Vianney.

I’m going to guess there are probably some things that aren’t exactly up to snuff with a guy who thinks threatening kids is no big deal running the program.