Now comes the real intrigue.
Yes, Mike Vrabel is back in Foxborough. As expected. A week after Jerod Mayo was fired just minutes after completing his one-and-done season as Bill Belichick’s successor, the New England Patriots made it official on Sunday and named Vrabel as the new coach.
So much for a long, exhaustive search. There was no forest of trees to shake. No bevy of bushes to beat. No search firms, no second interviews, no need to check more references.
Bob Kraft, the charismatic Patriots owner, got his man. And everybody knew this was coming. Even though Vrabel interviewed with the Chicago Bears and New York Jets, and the Las Vegas Raiders seemed like a potential dark horse because of his pal Tom Brady’s fingerprints, it always seemed like a matter of when, not if, he would return.
It’s also no wonder that Aaron Glenn, the hot Detroit Lions coordinator, turned down New England’s request for an interview/intel collection session.
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Vrabel will be introduced as Patriots coach at noon E.T. on Monday at the same plaza where he was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame in 2023, and the expectations are grand after back-to-back 13-loss seasons. So is the symmetry. A member of three of the franchise’s six Super Bowl champion units, the former linebacker comes back as an accomplished coach – he guided the Tennessee Titans to three playoff berths in six seasons – with presumably all the ingredients to make it work.
No doubt, Kraft’s sentiments are something like: Come fix this!
The intrigue, however, will be revealed with the power structure. To get Vrabel, I’m guessing that he gets a lot more personnel clout than Mayo (a first-time coach and former Patriots linebacker, too) worked with.
After all, Vrabel was in his position with the Titans long enough, and with a degree of success, to know what the alignment needs to be between the personnel and coaching wings. While it’s a major plus that he inherits a promising young quarterback in Drake Maye, how Vrabel meshes with the existing (and/or altered) personnel department looms as a huge component to his chances for success.
Take it from Tedy Bruschi, the former teammate and close friend of Vrabel’s. During ESPN’s ‘Sunday NFL Countdown,’ Bruschi dropped some serious knowledge about the dynamics of the changeover from Mayo to Vrabel.
“When they hired Jerod, at the press conference a big word that was used was ‘collaboration,’ ” Bruschi, the star analyst, said on the pregame studio show. “Everybody’s input and all that stuff. Well, I don’t know how much it is that anymore. And I think that’s a good thing.”
The Patriots don’t have a general manager and haven’t had anyone carry that title during Kraft’s ownership reign. Belichick, though, was viewed as essentially his own de facto GM, given his autonomy in running the football operation – a generation after Bill Parcells’ differences with Kraft included his desire to “shop for the groceries.”
After Belichick’s departure, Eliot Wolf was promoted to executive vice president of personnel from scouting director, with the power of having the final say on personnel moves. He’s flanked by senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith, who joined the Patriots last year.
The bulk of the personnel staff, however, are holdovers from the Belichick era – which is panned for the results in the latter years that left the Patriots with a depleted talent base.
Key question: Will Vrabel have the final say on personnel?
“In my opinion,” Bruschi added on ESPN, “there are some people in the front office that need to be told, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing and you need to take a step back.’
“Vrabel isn’t going to joke around. Vrabel is going to tighten the screws.”
Which is exactly why Vrabel is such a good hire. Sorry, Mayo. The process that the Patriots took to get here, though, not so good.
Start with the hiring of Mayo last year. Kraft chose Mayo as Belichick’s successor in 2023, writing a clause into his contract that assured as much. Kraft reasoned that with other teams showing interest in the linebacker coach, he wanted to lock him up long term.
Yet that ultimately prevented the Patriots from conducting a thorough search to replace Belichick. Then Mayo was ultimately undermined because of the weak commitment to stick with him, knowing that it would take a rebuilding job, given the holes in talent.
Here’s to hoping that Mayo, a victim of circumstance with the Patriots, eventually gets another shot at becoming a head coach. Also, another example of a pattern where Black coaches are held to a tougher standard than white coaches – since the Rooney Rule was instituted in 2003, nearly 31% of minority coaches were one-and-done, while less than 10% of white coaches during that span were fired after one season or less – Mayo certainly didn’t get the patience or support that Vrabel’s successor, Brian Callahan, has received from the Titans after finishing 3-14 in his first season.
Of course, Kraft – who could have pursued Vrabel last year if he didn’t already have an agreement with Mayo – opted out of his rookie coach because of the chance to lure one of the most coveted candidates on the market.
It should provide a lesson for any and all team owners: Be very careful in determining your next head coach. Conditions change. The market changes.
With the Patriots, the path to Vrabel also comes with the slew of questions about their quick compliance with the Rooney Rule. On Tuesday, two days after Mayo was fired, they conducted two former coordinators, Pep Hamilton and Byron Leftwich, who haven’t coached in the NFL since 2022. Were they legitimate candidates?
Perhaps Hamilton and Leftwich have aligned themselves as serious options to become coordinator or assume some other role on Vrabel’s staff. We’ll see. There’s also speculation that Josh McDaniels, the former Patriots coordinator who bombed in head coaching shots with the Denver Broncos and the Raiders, could return to Foxborough.
In any event, in finalizing the multi-year deal with Vrabel on Wild-Card Weekend, the Patriots achieved something during the playoffs that, since Brady left, is no longer the norm.
They scored a big victory.
Follow USA TODAY Sports’ Jarrett Bell on X @JarrettBell.
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