One of Mike Vrabel’s stated goals for the Patriots with respect to the upcoming season sounds simple enough.
“We just want to be good enough to take advantage of bad football,” Vrabel said during his introductory press conference in January. “That’s where we’re going to start.”
Given what’s played out the past few seasons, with bad football being more the norm for the Patriots, it’s a good place to start.
It just might be the easiest mission to accomplish. Even Vrabel isn’t convinced this group, which starts training camp Wednesday, will ultimately be up to the stated task.
“What I’ve tried to tell all the players is right now I don’t know if we’re good enough to take advantage of bad football. I’m unsure,” he went on. “Like we’re undefeated right now, but if we can just work towards taking advantage of bad football and being good enough to, when somebody makes a mistake, capitalizing on it and not being the ones that make the mistakes, and focusing on the little things and the details and helping them do their job better, that’s a great place to start.”
This used to be part of Bill Belichick’s playbook. The team’s former coach didn’t want the Patriots to beat themselves, but rather, have the other teams fall prey to their own miscues.
Belichick largely coached the bad football out of his teams, and watched other teams self-destruct.
That sure sounds a lot like Vrabel’s plan, and if he’s able to push the 2025 Patriots to that point, and accomplish that mission, the new coach should enjoy a pretty successful season, especially given a favorable schedule.
The mantra of taking advantage of bad football should play well against the Jets, Dolphins, Panthers, Giants, Saints, Falcons, etc.
If the Patriots hold serve against the teams they should beat on the schedule, that will go a long way toward getting out of their four-win rut, and being a fringe playoff team.
To this point, the players seem to have bought into the Vrabel way. They’ve appreciated his hands-on approach, and embraced the coaching not only from Vrabel, but his staff.
Is it even fair to think Vrabel will be able to get this group good enough to feast on bad teams?
Absolutely.
As the head coach of the Tennessee Titans, Vrabel was able to do more with less.
He was able to push players and challenge them to greater heights. He was able to make them take advantage of bad football on the opposing side.
Moreover, it didn’t take long for many of those players to believe with him on the sidelines, they had an edge.
Former Patriot Logan Ryan, who played for Vrabel in Tennessee, explained what that meant.
“I was blown away by how smart he was as a coach, as a strategist, an in-game strategist,” Ryan told MassLive earlier in the year. “He really gave us an advantage not only schematically defensively, but just using strategy at the end and knowing exactly what to do situationally.
“He knows what he’s doing,” Ryan went on. “He knows how to win games and he’ll do what it takes to win games.”
Vrabel, who won three Super Bowls as a player for the Patriots, went 54-45 over six seasons as the Titans head coach from 2018-23 and led Tennessee to the AFC Championship Game in 2019.
He did all of that without the benefit of a quarterback who had the promise and pedigree of Drake Maye.
Harold Landry, who was signed by the Patriots in free agency, also played for Vrabel. He pretty much echoed Ryan’s remarks.
“I feel like one of the main jobs for a head coach is to make sure your team’s prepared situationally,” Landry said. “And all I know is, as long as I played for Vrabes, there was never a situation I wasn’t prepared for. Like, I don’t care what the score was in the fourth quarter. I don’t know. We just always had a feeling that we was going to pull this out. Didn’t matter what the score was going into the fourth and we just always found a way to win. It’s crazy. We just found a way to win. And that was just kind of the mentality. We just didn’t think we could lose, to be honest, no matter what was going on in the game.”
After the Titans let him go, Vrabel spent last season with the Cleveland Browns as a consultant, but was involved and engaged with all aspects of the program.
It wasn’t much of a secret where club owner Robert Kraft was headed following the dismissal of Jerod Mayo after one season.
Kraft gave the baton to Vrabel, believing he could resurrect the team, and once again make the Patriots great again.
“In the interview process, Mike showed us that he had a very deep understanding of our current team,” Kraft said during Vrabel’s introductory press conference, “and most importantly, he had a clear and focused strategy of how to get us back to the championship way that is not only so important to all of us, but also something that I think our fan base really deserves and expects.”
Vrabel, who was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame in 2023, smartly signed several players who understood the culture he was trying to build.
He brought in players who also get what makes him tick as a head coach.
“I want to galvanize our football team. I want to galvanize this building. I want to galvanize our fans,” Vrabel said after being hired. “The most important thing are the players . . . I want to provide a program that provides their ownership but also their accountability of each other and one that they’ll be proud to be a part of and that they’re going to fight for.”
With training camp on tap, he’s already gotten that ball rolling. We’ll see soon enough if he makes this Patriots team good enough to take advantage of bad football.
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