On the night of Jan. 20, 2018, Mike Vrabel’s phone lit up with the call that the Tennessee Titans wanted to hire him as their head coach. At the time he was inside Limoncello’s, the iconic Italian restaurant in Boston’s North End, just a couple doors down from Paul Revere’s house.
Vrabel had spent eight seasons in New England as a powerful linebacker, helping the Patriots to three Super Bowl titles and countless memories. He was there that night as a father, his son, Tyler, was a high school star in Texas but was on a recruiting trip to Boston College, drawn back to the area of his father’s greatest success. Tyler would eventually sign and play for the Eagles.
Vrabel had already posed for selfies and accepted well-wishers — a recruit’s dad far more famous than the BC coaches, or nearly anyone else in town — before ducking out to take the call informing him of his big coaching break.
The Patriots had a coach at the time: Bill Belichick, who would lead the franchise to its sixth Super Bowl title that following season. The machine was humming on all cylinders, so the franchise wasn’t in the market for a new coach, let alone one with no experience.
Yet as Vrabel went off to coach the Titans, there was a sense among some that in a different scenario, he’d be perfect in Foxborough. Vrabel was raised in the Akron area, starred at Ohio State and also played NFL ball for Pittsburgh and Kansas City, but this guy was a Patriot, a Bostonian, a New Englander.
Or so it felt.
Sunday morning it all came full circle, Vrabel hired to take over New England as it tries to rebuild into something it once was. His six years coaching the Titans (2018-2023) were largely successful — 54 victories and three playoff appearances.
He sat out last year and watched from afar as the post-Belichick era collapsed under the stewardship of Vrabel’s one-time former teammate, Jerod Mayo.
Now it’s his turn to restore a mighty program that he helped create as a player.
Can he? Well, there is no telling and never is when it comes to coaching hires.
What New England has in Vrabel that it didn’t have in Mayo is team-running fundamentals (talent, cap space) that are far more positive to success, not to mention a coach who has already learned (both what to do and what not to do) on the job.
Belichick, after all, spent five years as coach of the Cleveland Browns before getting fired and then picked up as a retread (if you will) by Robert Kraft.
Vrabel will bring the kind of no-nonsense, no-excuse personality to the sideline that he exhibited as a hard-hitting, tone-setting defender in the middle of the field. There is never any doubt what Vrabel is thinking or where you stand with him.
This will be about attitude as much as coaching acumen, although there should be plenty of that as well.
For New England, it should be considered the best-case scenario coming out of the winter of the final years of Belichick and then Mayo’s brief tenure. No one has ever won like the Patriots did for two decades and the teardown was inevitable.
Much of it has been completed.
In New England, Vrabel gets the quarterback that he never truly had in Tennessee. Drake Maye was impressive despite plenty of headwinds as a rookie. If he continues to develop he could be the best, or close to it, of a loaded QB crop from the 2024 NFL Draft. The potential for a superstar is there.
The Patriots also own the No. 4 pick in the draft — it could’ve been No. 1 if not for a Week 18 victory — and a whopping, league-leading $133.5 million in cap space per Spotrac.com.
That cap number is $21 million more than second-ranked Las Vegas and more than $100 million more than the next AFC East rival — the New York Jets at $27.9 million.
None of that means an immediate reversal of fortune or a return to the days when you could pencil New England into 13 victories. Back then even Belichick would say the season didn’t truly start until after Thanksgiving and fans claimed it didn’t actually begin until a home AFC championship game.
Those were halcyon days, of course, and Vrabel was a part of it. He recorded 740 career tackles, 57 sacks and 11 interceptions (including, in 2005, a pick-6) to show his versatility. He won three Lombardis and was part of the epic 2007 team that went 16-0 in the regular season.
More than anything he was part of the original Belichick-group that set the tone for the “Patriot Way” — a professional, no-excuse, team-first attitude.
It’s what made him so beloved and had diners trying to snap photos long after his playing days in a cozy restaurant on a winter night.
He was headed off to Tennessee then. Now he’s back, better, perhaps, than ever.
