Oral History: How Patriots LB Mike Vrabel became Tom Brady’s best goal line weapon

Former Patriots coach Bill Belichick used to designate Fridays as goal line day. That’s when the team would run through a series of plays just outside of the end zone to prep for the upcoming game.

Red zone plays, especially down close, are vital to success or failure.

Legendary offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia typically ran those sessions and this particular week in 2001, the Patriots were trying something new.

Starting linebacker Mike Vrabel was going to get some reps on the goal line as a tight end.

After weeks of watching Vrabel run routes for Drew Bledsoe before games, Belichick and then-offensive coordinator Charlie Weis decided to try the linebacker as a tight end during those in-tight, must-have goal-line situations.

Initially, the experiment didn’t go well. Tom Brady couldn’t stand his secret weapon.

In the first practice Vrabel was utilized, the Patriots quarterback wasn’t amused by his new tight end’s approach.

During one of Brady’s drop-backs, Vrabel broke free into the end zone, started waving his hands, and yelled: “Tom! Tom! Tom!”

The urgent screams could be heard all the way to Walpole.

Understandably, Vrabel was excited by his new role. He couldn’t wait to make a play, and score a touchdown. But his pleas were ignored.

The GOAT threw the ball elsewhere.

As Vrabel, who was signed as a free agent from the Steelers in 2001, stepped back into the huddle, wondering why the ball didn’t come to him, Brady reamed him out, saying he was going to throw it to “whoever the (expletive) I want.”

Message received.

“He’s like, ‘Mikey, don’t ever wave your arms when you’re open ever again. I’ll never throw you the ball,” Vrabel recalled. “And I’m like, Randy (Moss) does it all the time. And he’s like, ‘I know who’s open. That’s my job.’ So I never waved and said I was open ever again.”

The result was one of the more improbable feats in football history.

During the regular season, Vrabel, who is about to lead his first minicamp as the Patriots head coach starting Monday, caught eight passes from Brady, all for touchdowns. He pulled in two more during the postseason, making him 10-for-10 as a Patriot.

Many of those scores came off play-action. Brady would fake a handoff to the running back, and toss the ball to a typically wide-open Vrabel.

After being traded to Kansas City, the linebacker who moonlighted as a tight end, caught two more touchdowns from former Patriot Matt Cassel, to make it 12-for-12 during his career.

Vrabel’s first touchdown catch came during the 2002 season. He’d catch at least one in four of the next five seasons.

During Vrabel’s 8-year Patriots Hall of Fame run in Foxborough as a player, Weis, Josh McDaniels and Bill O’Brien all witnessed his prowess on the goal line either as offensive coordinators, or assistant coaches.

More than 20 years later, many of those involved still chuckle at those memories, and marvel at his perfect stat line. It’s also been the subject of a lot of trash talk both then and now.

On the eve of mini-camp, even current tight end Hunter Henry, who’s heard all about the Vrabel legend, says the head coach has already gotten in his ear.

“Oh, he’s mentioned it,” Henry said with a smile. “And I’m sure I’ll hear more. But I‘ll take pointers from anybody, especially if they’re 10-for-10 down there. He’s obviously played this game. So I’m happy to take his advice.”

How and why did an All-Pro linebacker get turned into a tight end?

It started with a simple game of catch:

Drew Bledsoe: “One thing that’s made Mike excellent as a coach, and will continue to make him an excellent coach is his boundless energy. To the point where he’s almost like a labrador puppy, at least he was back then.

“If you don’t run him a little bit, he’ll go crazy. So before a game, he’d have so much energy that he needed to go run before the game to burn off some energy.

“I was always there before a game. Before warmups, he wanted to run around, and I wanted to throw the ball around. So he’d run routes for me.”

Charlie Weis: “When you go to games early, you see a lot of guys doing different stuff.

“What you’d always see Vrabel doing, he’d be out there catching passes. Before every game, he’d go out there and he’d be catching passes.

“So you’d sit there and you’d look at him, and you’d say, ‘This guy can catch.’ You have a lot of guys playing defense because they couldn’t catch the ball. But he had really soft hands and he could catch.”

Former RB coach Ivan Fears: “We had Richard Seymour and Junior Seau lined up as fullbacks. We had Troy Brown and Julian Edelman play defense. Why not use Mike?”

Bledsoe: “You had guys who were such exceptional athletes, and multi-faceted, if (the coaches) saw something that was an advantage … OK, let’s put our strongest guy in the backfield, let’s put Seymour back there blowing people over. Vrabel is a gifted athlete who’s tall and can catch. Why not throw him the ball a little bit?”

Fears: “He would be on the scout team, just to give Brady shit. He wanted to mess with Brady’s mind. He made practice like game day almost every time. So putting him with Brady, it was a no-brainer.”

Weis: “Belichick and I talked about it. Belichick was always big on position flexibility. The more you could do … how many times did you hear that one? So we’d start using him, and he was just a natural for it. And he liked doing it.

“It wouldn’t take away from any of his time on defense. We didn’t overdo it, or anything like that. We game-planned for it. If we were to call a pass and he was going to be in, he was going to be a multiple-touch receiver on every play.”

Dante Scarnecchia: “Everybody knows Mike’s got great hands, can catch everything. He was a gifted athlete in high school. Whoever suggested it, and I don’t know if it was Bill or Charlie …but you could go into a game with just two tight ends, and Mike could be the third one in the situations we needed to have multiple tight ends. Then the next thing that happens, the guy catches everything.”

Weis: “I think every pass we threw to him was a touchdown.”

Former Patriots safety Rodney Harrison: “I’ll tell you, Vrabel could have been a starting tight end. I’m not saying he would have been a Pro Bowl tight end, but he’d be a starting tight end because he was tough, he had great size, tremendous hands, and he could run. I never saw Mike Vrabel lifting weights, he was always on the treadmill. And he would run. He could run all day.”

Former Patriots OL Damien Woody: Mike’s just a football player. Obviously, his 9-to-5 job was on the defense at linebacker. But as a football player, understanding what to do down by the goal line, utilizing angles and rubs, and all these types of things to free yourself up down there, and obviously just being an athlete and having the hand-eye coordination to make those types of plays, that’s what made him so unique in that role.”

Bill O’Brien: “He had tight end qualities. He was 6-foot-5, 250, great hands, athletic ability. That just gave him another thing he could talk shit about. And, he would.”

Once it was established Vrabel would moonlight on offense, he had to take some time away from defense to attend offensive meetings, and go over situations on the field. Scarnecchia, who conducted the goal-line sessions before taking it out to the field, was always left waiting for Vrabel to show up. Then at practice, Vrabel bounced between defense and offense on those Friday goal-line days. The defense was hell-bent on not letting him score. And the offense was of similar mind because it provided more ammunition for Vrabel’s trash-talking.

Josh McDaniels: “We would be kind of waiting to start the goal line meeting. Dante was always the guy who ran the meeting. And we’d just be waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Someone had to go get Vrabel from the defensive meeting.

“So Mike, of course, would always make a grand entrance into the offensive room. And he would bang the door open and say, ‘Ok Dante, we can start the goal line meeting, the most important person is here.‘‘’

Former TE Christian Fauria: “It was always kind of funny, Vrabel would roll in on a Friday, just smirking like a cat that ate the canary knowing that he was possibly going to steal a touchdown from us, just by going out in the route.”

Harrison: “We would go against Mike if he would switch (to offense). And if it was me or Gene (Eugene Wilson) or one of the safeties, we better not let him catch the ball. I don’t care who runs the ball in, they can walk the ball in. Mike’s not catching it. We made it a point.”

Vrabel: “Those guys were trying to kill me at practice, because they knew I was trying to catch a pass against our defense. And, they would leave somebody else open, because they were like, at all costs, we’re not letting Mike score.”

Former QB Matt Cassel: “I kind of appreciated that he was itching to get in there on the goal line. He wanted to get really good, because this was his opportunity.

“I think he had 15 or 16 touchdowns or something like that in his career. I definitely had the honor of throwing a few to him myself in Kansas City.”

When it was finally game-time, and Vrabel was sent out for goal line, everyone – except the opposing team – knew the ball was headed for No. 50.

He impacted games on both sides of the ball. During Week 8 of the 2007 season as one example, in a game against Washington, Vrabel forced three fumbles, had three sacks, recovered an onside kick and scored an offensive touchdown.

There was also a lot of playful jealousy from the other tight ends and receivers. And a lot of good-natured ribbing between Vrabel and his teammates.

Fauria: “He had a touchdown against the Rams. It was a corner route. And I remember thinking, that was a really good catch. The worst thing about it, if you built up his ability to be snarky, condescending, passive-aggressive, and just twist the knife … the knife was already in our back. And he was able to twist it every time on the goal line. We were like ‘Oh no, here he comes.‘‘’

Former receiver Troy Brown: “We wanted to punch him in the face a few times.”

Harrison: “Mike was the biggest A-hole you could imagine. He wanted to make sure everyone knew, ‘Hey, you guys couldn’t get it done on offense. You needed a defensive guy to get it done.’ But it still looked weird to me when he went on the offensive side of the ball. We used to joke with him – ‘You traitor, You fraud!“’

Fauria: “It was always like Tom’s first read was covered. His second read was covered. Here comes the shallow cross to the player who isn’t supposed to get the ball. And, oh by the way, it’s the linebacker who’s got eight straight touchdowns and they’re still not covering him. Amazing.

“And then there was a lot of ’FE.’ And if you don’t know what ‘FE’ means, it’s fake enthusiasm. ‘Yay, we’re so happy for you, Mike. Great job.’

“It got to the point where this was completely out of our control. I had talked to Mike years ago about this. And it was like, ‘Listen, Dude. You were never the first read, ever! Maybe one time. So let’s not act like you were a red zone threat. They just kept ignoring you,’ which I thought was amazing.”

Bledsoe: “It caught people by surprise the first few times. He’s a linebacker, a pass rusher, right? But then they had to know where No. 50 was. After he caught a few, they caught on a little bit. We really need to defend this guy. He’s not just an extra lineman. He’s a good receiver. So it was sort of surprising that he got as open as he did catches 4-thru-11. That element of surprise you would think would have gone away, but it didn’t.”

Harrison: “That’s the thing that puzzled me as a player. Whenever Mike came in on offense … and you knew his record. The coaches gave his numbers during the week, and told the players you better cover him, and time and time again, they do not cover him.”

Vrabel: “(Sarcastically) I wasn’t open all the time. It just seemed like that. There was somebody assigned to me. It’s just whether or not they covered me or whether I was able to get open. There were times where I actually got open. It wasn’t like they forgot to cover me.”

All kidding aside, Vrabel made some nice plays and some critical catches, most notably in the Super Bowl.

In the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XXXVIII against the Carolina Panthers in 2004, Brady threw a 1-yard touchdown pass to Vrabel, making him the first defensive player to score a Super Bowl touchdown on offense since William “Refrigerator” Perry, who did so for the Chicago Bears against the Patriots in 1986’s Super Bowl XX.

Vrabel was one of the defensive stars as well; he had two sacks (one forcing a fumble) of Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme. Then in Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005, Vrabel caught a two-yard touchdown pass despite being held by the Eagles’ Jevon Kearse. Both of those Super Bowls were one-score victories for the Patriots.

McDaniels: “I called five of those (touchdowns) that he wound up catching.”

Scarnecchia: “Our goal-line passes, we had three or four of them that we always worked on. It’s tough to cover people down there. He was always in a three-point stance. He was the ‘X’ tight end which was away from the other tight ends. We could run the ball over toward him, we could run the ball away from him, or we could throw it. And, he’s a big guy to cover with an expansive catching range. So all of those things factored into it.”

Fears: “One thing we knew, you better throw it to him. We knew Mike was always going to be in the right place. And he’s going to give you everything he had on 50-50 balls, so if you threw it up to him, he’s going to come down with it, or nobody’s going to come down with it.”

McDaniels: “My favorite (touchdown)? The one in ’04 in the Super Bowl in Philly. It was a close game. And then it got tipped. And I remember he kind of batted it up in the air, and he ended up hauling it in. Then he did the ‘Fly Eagle Fly’ celebration.”

Vrabel: “That was what they did so we were being funny trying to give it back to them. But the catch was more impressive than the celebration.”

McDaniels: “It wasn’t a simple catch. It was an important play … we ended up winning the game by three points. It was a huge play on the biggest stage.”

Vrabel: “My favorite was the one in Houston versus Carolina (in the Super Bowl). It was towards the end of the game. It felt like a big moment for the team. And scoring that TD led to being on the podium which led to (son) Tyler being up there as a little kid. We got great pics. It was a cool moment.”

Bledsoe: “I never got to throw him a touchdown in a game. All of those came from Tommy. But I’m definitely claiming credit for opening their eyes to the fact he could catch the ball. He owes all of those to me, even though I didn’t throw him one.

“But it’s a testament to Mike that he really was that good going out and catching the ball. Not everyone is like that. Most pass rushers don’t have great hands. So it’s not everybody that can do that. If defensive guys could catch, they’d all play offense.”

Harrison: “Mike was a special guy. He was a guy that did anything it took to win.”

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