It wasn't too long ago that Mike Vrabel was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame. In that same building in Foxborough, Mass., on Monday, he was officially introduced as New England's new head coach.
"I want to thank the teams that were willing to meet with me through this process to give me an opportunity to potentially lead their team," Vrabel said in his opening statement. "But in the end, it was clear to me and my family and my soul that this was the place that I wanted to be."
Vrabel takes over for Jerod Mayo, another former Patriot who led an underwhelming 4-13 campaign and was fired after one season on Jan. 5. Vrabel said his first order of business is reshaping the culture in New England.
"I want to galvanize our football team," Vrabel said. "I want to galvanize this building. I want to galvanize our fans. The most important thing are the players. There are some of them right here. I want to provide a program that provides their ownership but also their accountability of each other and one they'll be proud to be a part of and that they're gonna fight for. ...
"We're gonna earn the right to be here every day. We're gonna remove entitlement from our football team. We're gonna get everything that we've earned, from the head coach to the position coaches, all the way down to the players. We're gonna earn the right to be here every single day."
Patriots owner Robert Kraft quickly moved away from a succession plan from Bill Belichick's glorious run from 2000 to 2023 in firing Mayo after just one season. Kraft, who took responsibility for putting Mayo in what he called "an untenable situation," is confident Vrabel will be able to turn around the Patriots given his previous experience as a head coach and that of his understanding as a player during Belichick's reign.
"In the interview process, Mike showed us that he had a very deep understanding of our current team, and most importantly, he had a clear and focused strategy for how to get us back to a championship way that is so important to all of us, but also something that I think our fan base really deserves and expects," Kraft said on Monday.
Vrabel takes over a roster that has largely been the makeup of the franchise's three-season long playoff-less streak, the franchise's longest postseason drought in 30 years.
Drake Maye was the shining light of an otherwise dark 2024 season in New England. Following a 1-4 start, the No. 3 overall pick was put into the starting role in Week 6 and instantly added some juice to the passing game. He finished with 2,276 yards with 15 touchdowns and 10 interceptions for a 88.1 passer rating and led the Patriots to a 3-9 record in 12 starts as a rookie.
Vrabel said Maye, along with all returning Patriots, will have an "opportunity to start over" under his new direction.
"Put great people around him," Vrabel said of his plan with Maye. "I would say my involvement will be as it relates to game management and situational awareness and where we are on the football field and trying to develop him as a leader of the offense. A quarterback, when they call the play, you want to say like everybody's going to believe it is going to score a touchdown. Like with that type of emphasis on how everything is going to operate. Drake is going to be his own person, but I'm going to give him some things that I feel like are necessary to help us win football games. We have to be a very efficient passing football team."
The Patriots hold the No. 4 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. Protecting Maye, who was sacked 34 times in his 12 starts, figures to be a priority going forward. Vrabel indicated it will be a collaborative process with Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf in building a talented roster.
"I think the most important thing is that there's a shared organizational vision for what we want to do and how we want to work and how we want to acquire players," Vrabel said. "We don't want to always be on the same page. That's not the environment that we want to create. But we want to have a shared vision and there's also different ways to get there. I'm embracing that everybody's going to have a different personality. I don't want my staff to be like me. I don't want all our players to be similar. We're gonna have diverse ideas, and that's critical."
In six seasons as head coach of the Tennessee Titans, Vrabel accrued a 54-45 regular-season record and 2-3 playoff record in three postseason appearances. He also won the AP Coach of the Year award in 2021 when he led the Titans to the conference's No. 1 seed. Vrabel's most successful season in Tennessee came in 2019, when the Titans reached the AFC Championship Game. During that playoff run, Vrabel's Titans went into Gillette Stadium and knocked out the Patriots in the Wild Card Round, which ended up being Tom Brady's last game with New England.
Vrabel's tenure in Tennessee ended with some surprise following the 2023 campaign after notching consecutive losing seasons. An Akron native and Ohio State alum, Vrabel spent 2024 in Cleveland as a consultant.
The 49-year-old played eight of of his 14 seasons as in the NFL with the Patriots, winning three Super Bowls during that span. He finished his Patriots career with the fourth-most sacks (48) in franchise history and was inducted into the team's Hall of Fame in October of 2023.
Vrabel becomes the fourth head coach (excluding interims) to become the HC of a team they won a Super Bowl with as a player, according to NFL Research. With Vrabel succeeding Mayo, the Patriots join the Green Bay Packers as the only teams to have two former players of the team serve as their head coach in consecutive seasons, according to NFL Research. Forrest Gregg took over for Bart Starr following the 1983 season in Green Bay.
New England enjoyed the beginning of its incredible success at the turn of the century with Vrabel's No. 50 jersey roaming the sidelines. He was an integral part of a championship defense as a team leader and even scored a handful of important touchdowns as a red-zone threat during his playing days. That experience is partly why the Patriots jumped at the opportunity to bring Vrabel aboard, and the evidence of those glory days will be a reference point in Foxborough as he takes over.
"The banners that hang in our stadium, they're not going to help us win, but I think it's a great reminder of what it takes to win and the type of people that you have to have in the organization, the selflessness, the work and the sacrifice that you have to make," Vrabel said. "So, to me, those are great reminders of what it takes. Just because those banners hang, that's not going to give us an advantage on the field but it's going to give us a blueprint on how hard we need to work and the things we need to do to be successful."
