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.”
