New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel addressed the media on February 10, reflecting on the team’s season and discussing plans for the offseason. Vrabel described the end of the year as disappointing but emphasized the progress made by his team.
“Well, I just talked about a disappointing finish to a phenomenal, exciting, enjoyable year. It’s unfortunate. Talked to them about the foundation I think that we’ve built. Much like a home, you build a home and then run out of things to do, so you continue to add on to it, you finish the basement, you make additions to it, and we’ll try to do that to this football team. I like the foundation of it, and we’ll try to improve on it,” Vrabel said.
Vrabel noted he expects some downtime for himself and his staff before resuming player evaluations and preparations for upcoming events such as the combine. He acknowledged that changes are inevitable in professional football: “I don’t know if that’s difficult today. I mean, there’ll be some difficult decisions that we’ll have to make, and we’ll try to do them with the team’s best interest in mind. As always, that’ll never change.”
When asked about lessons from their Super Bowl experience and areas for improvement moving forward, Vrabel responded: “No, not right now. I don’t think that this is a time to go into those. Just still try to enjoy the season, enjoy 17 wins, the opportunity to coach these guys and whatever that looks like. But we know we’ll continually have to improve.”
Addressing questions regarding coaching staff continuity—specifically Zak Kuhr’s future as defensive coordinator—Vrabel indicated decisions would be made over coming days or weeks: “Yeah, there’ll be a lot of things that we’ll have to work through there… I’ll work through all those things here in the next couple days, weeks, however long those decisions may take.”
Reflecting on expectations at season’s start versus outcomes achieved by his squad in New England during his first year as head coach: “Every time you guys ask me about my expectations, I say I try not to have any so that I’m not disappointed…the biggest thing is I think we learned how to win.”
Regarding individual players such as Will Campbell—whose position was debated entering last year’s draft—Vrabel expressed confidence: “Will’s 22 years old. He’s our left tackle…We’re not moving Will to guard, to center, to tight end or anywhere else.”
He also discussed challenges facing teams seeking sustained success: “How hard it is to win a championship…But you have to start over…The offseason program starts in 10 weeks.”
On evaluating player character beyond statistics or game tape during recruitment processes Vrabel said: “There’s no test at the combine to measure away heart…So we have put it upon ourselves…to identify the right type of people.”
Summarizing his first year with New England Patriots compared with when he started nearly one year ago: “Like I said…I feel like we learned how to win…We know that there’s going be transactions…but I hope they know we have their best interests in mind…there’s a level of respect there.”
He closed by thanking members of local media for their coverage throughout what he described as an eventful season.
