When Mike Vrabel was introduced as the 16th head coach of the New England Patriots back in January, he left the fans with a mantra. It came across as simple yet oddly refreshing and attainable for a team coming off consecutive last-place finishes in the AFC East.
"We just want to be good enough to take advantage of bad football," Vrabel said. "That's where we're going to start."
The Patriots have been the epitome of a bad football team in recent seasons, with subpar wide receiver talent and a revolving door at both quarterback and left tackle the underlying issues. The team has worked to stabilize all three of those position groups both in free agency and the draft, so at the very least, Vrabel should have a clean slate when the games start counting again in September.
Vrabel, of course, has never been shy about playfully ribbing a player, coach, or media member. He’s been an All-Pro heckler going back to his playing days, and he recently gave Ben Volin of the Boston Globe the business for repeating a question he had already answered during a July presser.
NFL insider Dianna Russini of The Athletic recently described Vrabel as a "detail psycho" who sweats the dumb (expletive) that separates the winners from the losers in the NFL. So if eliminating (and exploiting) bad football is indeed the blueprint for success in Foxboro, Vrabel is uniquely qualified to get the job done.
Mike Vrabel’s ‘Bad (Bleep)’ film segment was a reportedly a staple with the Tennessee Titans
Longtime Boston sports personality Ben Simmons recently had Russini on as a guest on his podcast, and she revealed Vrabel’s weekly film-room staple with the Titans was designed both for teachable moments and a little bit of levity.
Per Russini, Vrabel would present a compilation of bad football to his players to help hammer home what gets teams beat in the NFL.
“He actually is a good coach,” Russini told Simmons. “Like this isn’t just smoke and mirrors. They’re not just like getting a rah-rah guy in, which is probably the thing about him that gets misunderstood most from covering him for so many years. I think people think that he’s just a tough guy that cheers guys on and motivates well, but he has a plan. He’s a detail psycho.
His game management is some of the best in football. He cares about dumb (stuff) — that I think is dumb but I get why he does and why his entire staff is obsessed over things. Like I remember in Tennessee, on Fridays they basically put together a tape called ‘Dumb (Stuff)’ … and Vrabes would have his assistants pull all the dumb stuff from the week prior, from that Sunday prior, of the mistakes teams were making.
Like self-inflicted (stuff). You know? And then show it to the team. It’s a great learning tool, right? Like, ‘Hey, this is what they did in that situation. We don’t do that.’”
For Patriots fans, this seems oddly familiar. It 100 percent sounds like something Bill Belichick would do during Vrabel's playing days, only it's been well documented that Belichick would focus as much on the Patriots' "bad stuff" as their opponent each week.
There’s a new sheriff in town now, and Vrabel clearly has his own style. If New England’s new head coach can help clean up his own team’s sloppy football from years past and bring a little levity to the party, his team just might live up to fans’ growing expectations for this fast-approaching 2025 season.