Mike Vrabel interview: what he said across two sessions after the Jacksonville loss
Vrabel spoke on WEEI and then at Gillette on Monday. Across both he called one throw a terrible decision, rejected the word 'discipline,' and said almost nothing is going to change this week.
A note on the quotes. Vrabel’s press conference remarks are from the transcript the team published. His radio remarks are from his weekly appearance on WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show,” transcribed from this video, with repeated words and verbal fillers removed and nothing else changed.
He thinks they handed it over
The bottom line: Vrabel keeps returning to three plays rather than to the 29-point margin.
“We just did not give ourselves a chance,” he said on the radio. “We turn the ball over. We missed the field goal, and then when we had the other chance to kick a field goal, we turned it over again.”
He had the counterpoint ready: “If this game just unfolds the way that we needed it to, it’s 14-9. We have a chance where we feel like it’s a game.”
He also came armed with what Jacksonville had been doing at home, saying the Jaguars had outscored opponents by 10 points in the first half over their last 10 home games and were turning takeaways into points at a high rate.
On Maye: squeezing, not broken
The bottom line: Vrabel used the same golf metaphor in both sessions, and in both he located the problem in how hard Maye is trying rather than in what he can do.
On the radio: “Sometimes we’re so focused on it that we try to choke the life out of the golf club, and we’re squeezing it so damn tight that the ball has no choice but to go sideways. We need to stop trying to choke the life out of every single play.”
Asked at Gillette how to fix that without denting Maye’s confidence, he went further: “Confidence comes from your preparation … I can’t manufacture confidence. I can’t just say, ‘Hey, be confident.’ You have to practice. You have to hit those plays in practice, and you have to feel good about it.”
He was blunt about the throw itself. Asked on the radio what his assessment of the end-zone interception was, after declining to speculate about what Maye believed: “That it’s a terrible decision.”
Asked whether a struggling quarterback is better off grinding or stepping back: “I think it’s about just getting back and working. Being around people you care about, having a small circle. Focus on the people that truly matter.” And: “Drake’s our quarterback, man. We got to get this thing right by all of us.”
Explanations, not excuses
The bottom line: Vrabel shut down the shoulder question in both sessions and drew a line under the postgame comments about blood on the football.
Asked at Gillette about a lingering shoulder problem dating to the Denver game: “No, I’m not [aware of one] … There was not, to my knowledge, anything that would have put him on the injury report or any sort of treatment … I don’t anticipate that being any issue going forward.”
On the radio he was sharper: “I can’t speak on what his shoulder feels like. That’s nothing that I even have ever heard anything about.” On the blood on the football: “If the center’s hands [are] bleeding, then we’re going to have to find [a] way. There’s going to be some things on the football at times. But those are facts, those are explanations. We can hear explanations. We can’t allow for excuses.”
The penalties, and one specific coaching point
The bottom line: Vrabel rejected the word discipline and then listed the mistakes anyway.
“I don’t think that we’re not disciplined,” he said. “It’s [an] emotional game. We can’t become emotional. We have to be able to regulate emotions when you’re up, when you make a play, when you make a mistake.” His summary of the afternoon: “We really became a Friday tape in one short afternoon of all the things to not do.”
On Mack Hollins’ taunting penalty: “Mack knows the difference again. He’s excited. … He got up and responded in a way that we didn’t need to.”
He spent longest on Kyle Williams stepping out of bounds fielding a kickoff, and insisted it was not ignorance: “I could tell you he knows. He’s been shown. We practice it.” The coaching point that got Williams there, Vrabel explained, is that returners are taught to catch the ball moving forward so blockers are not overrun. “I know that’s what Kyle was trying to do. Didn’t execute it.”
The red zone cost them at both ends
The bottom line: Jacksonville scored on all five red zone trips. New England reached first-and-goal at the 5 before halftime and came away with nothing.
On the defensive side: “We didn’t play very good red zone defense. We got them in some longer yardage situations, and they made a play a couple times, and we didn’t … That’s what cost us last year, and I think you saw that repeatedly last year when we played good defense and then didn’t play very well in the red zone.”
On the offensive series, and whether the plan had been to run the ball and drain Jacksonville’s timeouts: “No … we are just trying to have a good plan for plays inside the 5-yard line. We weren’t trying to get cute.” Asked if he was satisfied with the plays: “No.”
A roster where 24 of 54 are new
The bottom line: Vrabel twice pointed at how much of this team has not been here before.
“Twenty-four of the 54 guys on the game day roster are first-year players to our team,” he said at Gillette, “so I have to remind myself that I have to continue to coach that and explain to them the identity that we want to build.”
Asked on the radio what concerned him most, he started in the same place: “There’s a lot of first and second year players. There’s a lot of new players again on our roster.”
Asked whether the offense has a leader in the way it did last season, he declined to name one and described what he wants instead: “We have to find players that are willing to emerge when things are not great. We don’t want front runners … Everyone is responsible for their own attitude.”
He gave the same answer when asked directly about team chemistry on the radio: “Vibes are based on, that’s everybody’s own responsibility, is their vibe. They’re responsible for their attitude. I don’t know. Winning usually helps.”
What actually changes this week
The bottom line: Not much, by his own account.
Asked at Gillette whether the practice week needs to change: “We believe in the way that we prepare. We believe in the schedule, and we would not be doing it if we didn’t believe in it. And at some point in time, you may have to alter things just to change it up. Paint the walls, I don’t know. See if production goes up. But I don’t know if there will be a ton of things that change.”
On the pass rush against Buffalo, after Trevor Lawrence had time: “If you get there with four then great. If not, you’re going to have to blitz, and that’s where we’re at.” He listed what was left on the field against Jacksonville: a couple of missed sacks, two dropped interceptions, missed tackles that led to explosive plays.
On the trip itself: New England goes “on the road [against a] team that’s won 20 out of the last 22 games at home.”
On the mood in the building: “The mood sucks. You got to come back here, you got to work, you got to be disappointed, be frustrated, be all those things. And then at four o’clock today we’re going to have to let it go.” Asked whether this group can do that: “We’ll see. I mean, hell, I don’t know. It’s not 4:00 yet.”
Our take
The striking thing here is how little Vrabel wants to change.
He believes in the practice schedule. He is not simplifying the offense so much as asking this team to run it better. The one concrete adjustment he named for Buffalo was blitzing more if four rushers can’t get home. Asked what he would alter about the week, he got as far as joking about painting the walls and then said he doubted much would change at all.
That is a coach who thinks he has an execution problem. And the evidence mostly backs him. Five red zone trips for Jacksonville, five scores. For the Pats, first-and-goal at the 5 and nothing. Two dropped interceptions and a couple of missed sacks. None of that is a scheme that doesn’t work. It’s a scheme this team can’t execute well.
The part that should make you nervous is the number he keeps reaching for. Twenty-four of 54 players on the game day roster are new to the building, and he brought it up unprompted in both sessions. That’s the explanation and the problem in one statistic, because “they’ll learn” is a fine answer in September and an unacceptable one by November.
Buffalo has won 20 of its last 22 at home. If the answer really is better execution, this is the week it needs to start showing up.