Mike Vrabel was a favorite after last season when the Patriots head-scratchingly dismissed Bill Belichick from all his duties. The thought was to keep the future Hall-of-Famer as Head Coach and hire a GM to assist. Robert Kraft didn't, and he's still scraping the egg off his face as a result.
Regardless, that's history, and he got the Head Coaching choice right this year with Mike Vrabel. Whether you feel that his Offensive Coordinator, Josh McDaniels, was foisted upon Vrabel or not, the reality is that Vrabel's hires have sent a clear and distinct message or two to Patriot Nation.
Those messages, however discrete they may be, will be the topic of discussion here. Discrete means there have been no overt pronouncements, fanfare, or dissing of anyone who may have come before.
There's only Vrabel, the experienced, professional Head Coach, and his decisions. And frankly, they speak as loud as you'd ever want to hear.
Mike Vrabel is putting his stamp on the new Patriots coaching staff for the 2025 season
The coaching hires by Vrabel speak volumes about the real changed situation at Gillette Stadium. This is a Head Coachchange at Gillette Stadium. This is a Head Coach who's been through the NFL meat grinder. He's seen the good times and the bad who's been through the NFL meat grinder. He's seen the good times and the worst. He's been fired, as many of the all-time great Head Coaches have been, and he has learned from the experience.
Vrabel has charted his own unambiguous course in his coaching hires. Unlike Belichick, who took insular staffs to an art form, Vrabel casts a broader net. That doesn't mean he hasn't reached back to familiar, trusted faces, especially from his days coaching at Tennessee. He has, but other than McDaniels, they're not of the so-called Belichick coaching tree. And that ... makes all the difference.
As mentioned, several are from the Mike Vrabel coaching tree. And whether you're an arborist or not, seeing a new tree growing in Foxborough is refreshing. First, he added Terrell Williams, a coach from the Detroit Lions, as defensive coordinator. Williams spent all six years of Vrabel's tenure in Tennessee with him, both as a defensive line coach and ending as Assistant Head Coach in 2023.
Obviously, Vrabel has a high opinion of Williams, and he's likely his top assistant, McDaniels or no McDaniels. He also brought along several other compatriots from Tennessee , as Matt Geagan of cbsnews.com noted. The names aren't necessary; the concept makes all the difference.
Vrabel's Patriots coaching staff is his and no one else's
Former Tennessee, Ohio State, and Cleveland Browns guys he's worked with put a distinctly Vrabel stamp on his coaching staff. Also, bringing in his personnel assistant, Ryan Cowden with whom he worked in Tennessee, as Vice President of Player Personnel is also a bold statement. The Patriots already have an Executive Vice President of Player Personnel, Eliot Wolf. Guess who'll be having the most influence on Vrabel?
Additionally, Vrabel has also hired several former NFL head coaches to his staff. They are McDaniels and Ben McAdoo. who was retained from Jerod Mayo's staff, Tony Brown, a former Bears' interim Head Coach, and Doug Marrone. Hiring former NFL Head Coaches screams Vrabel's supreme confidence in his abilities, and lack of any fear whatsoever that one of his assistants is being looked upon as his successor.
Vrabel's previously mentioned hires from his days in Tennessee and elsewhere from his coaching experience signal that new coaching ideas and concepts are at work. The all-encompassing quarter-century running, so-called Belichick coaching tree, has finally been uprooted.
Patriot Nation should be over-the-top excited about Vrabel's new coaching staff and what it represents. It's an almost total break from the past (McDaniels-excepted) with a new and different approach. Mike Vrabel is not a branch of Bill Belichick's coaching tree. He never coached under Bill at all. He's planted his own sapling, and it will be fun to see it grow. Expect it ... to flourish.