-
Ryan Hockensmith
THIS IS A TIME of massive joy in the middle of Gillette Stadium, and yet Mike Vrabel is running from it. He shakes hands with Houston Texans coach DeMeco Ryans and darts off the field as his New England Patriots celebrate a trip to the AFC title game. It’s not a sprint. But it’s not a jog, either. This run is important.
Big, sloppy snowflakes are falling, with each one feeling like a wet slap across the face. About 60,000 fans roar in the stands on that day, Jan. 18, and all 100 or so members of the home sideline linger around the Patriots logo after their 28-16 win. The only person missing is their coach, Vrabel.
Even at 50 years old, the 6-foot-4 former linebacker can move. He rarely has to hit a speed like he does on this day, but then again, he can’t be late. He had started a tradition during his Titans coaching days of darting into the tunnel underneath the stadium, home or away, so that he can greet every player as they come off the field. It doesn’t matter to him if it is a big playoff win or a forgettable September loss — Vrabel knows the price that players pay, and it’s a tax that his body paid for 14 years, including eight seasons and three Super Bowl wins for the Patriots during the Bill Belichick era.
«This is a tough game, a physical game,» Vrabel tells me during a news conference. «They’re beat up and banged up, and I want to thank them. I want to see them and say that. That is a good chance to be appreciative of them and their efforts.»
He sprints because he doesn’t want to miss a single player on their way in. He has done it enough to know that some guys head in right away after a tough day at the office. So he can’t let them beat him, and he will sacrifice any fun in the middle of the field in favor of showing gratitude in the cover of the tunnel. There’s no place he’d rather be.
He’s barreling fast as he comes around the corner. So fast that a stadium worker in an orange coat begins to wildly wave his arms as Vrabel is about to enter the slip-and-slide that the tunnel has become. «Slow, slow, slow!» the guy yells with love and concern. «Go slow! It’s wet.»
Vrabel slows down but he still is coming in hot, as is a wave of players right behind him. He’s nimble enough that he navigates the corner without any issues. Vrabel sets up shop 50 feet inside the tunnel, just past a pack of fans leaning over a wall yelling and waving at him.
Over the next 15 minutes, players wander in sporadically, each time with the guy in orange leaping forward to yell, «Be careful! The ground is a mess.» Vrabel tells them things like, «Great job today» and «Thank you for what you did out there.» Receiver Kayshon Boutte gets an especially long embrace. Boutte had a remarkable game-clinching touchdown catch on the day, and Vrabel pulls him in close to say, «I’m proud of you.»
«I’m so grateful that you believed in me,» Boutte says back.
But words aren’t the main way that Vrabel expresses appreciation: He’s all physicality. It’s the style of affection shown through shoves, pulls and wrestling around rather than eye contact and compliments.
The warmth of the exchanges comes from a shared understanding of the bruising nature of what they have in common. In this case, it’s football. But this kind of appreciation can also be seen between siblings at a family barbecue, two reunited Army buddies or a pair of jujitsu black belts who used to train together. This might be a sixth love language, because none of the accepted five manage to capture Vrabel’s brand of Linebacker-itsu.
Vrabel has a variety of moves that he uses in the tunnel. Hugs. Handshakes. Back slaps. Half headlocks. Full headlocks. Sometimes he’ll high-five and then smack his right hand onto a guy’s chest, while at the same time squeezing his left hand on the player’s back. He couldn’t compact an actual car with that clamp, but a junior high kid would probably need to see a doctor afterward.
«He’s still got a lot of muscle to him,» cornerback Alex Austin says. «When he grabs hold of you, you feel it.»
Drake Maye, who has gone from a promising rookie in 2024 to perhaps the future face of the league one year later under Vrabel.
The two are close, but Vrabel’s not his buddy. Vrabel coaches everybody the same — he is a constant, firm force who hugs hard so that he can coach hard, too. With Maye, Vrabel pops into most QB meetings and talks to the second-year star when he walks off the field, after touchdowns or turnovers. Players all say the same thing: Vrabel is a wizard at navigating the line between supporting coach and biting feedback provider because he never comes and goes — his conversations don’t start and end, they sort of just keep going.
«He’s got a sarcasm that I haven’t really figured out 100% yet,» Maye says. «He’s got a tough sarcasm where I want to laugh, but you don’t really want to.»
«That’s not sarcasm,» Vrabel says back.
There’s nothing but smiles on this frosty Sunday afternoon, though. Maye enters the tunnel at an Olympic speed-walker trot but encounters the same stadium worker. This is the franchise’s incredible young hope, so the guy dials up an all-out yelp for Maye. «Slow down, please … it’s very wet!» he yells. «Please.»
Maye obliges, giving Vrabel more time 50 feet away to brace for his arrival. When he gets to Vrabel, Maye doesn’t slow down. He passes Vrabel to the left and reaches his right hand out to tap his coach in the belly. Vrabel counterattacks to Maye’s midsection, then begins to backpedal to tag along at Maye’s side for 10 feet. He barks words of encouragement toward Maye as he jogs backward in what looks like a full LB drop, then he finally breaks away from the quarterback when Maye goes through the locker room door.
Vrabel stops, then pivots to refasten himself to his spot in the tunnel. There’s still some more Linebacker-itsu to give out.
Marcus Bryant says. «But with Vrabes, you can really strike him — he’s sturdy.»
Vrabel has the head man title on his business card, so nobody questions that his voice is the most powerful in the building. But his presence is a physical one as much as anything else, and he doesn’t need to wear his three Super Bowl rings to prove his aura. Players just know. And if they don’t, they realize it almost immediately with the nature of his coaching.
Make no mistake, Vrabel has no pangs about wanting to still play. «Nope,» Vrabel tells me in the scrum. «Every day that I wake up, I’m glad that I don’t have to practice or play.»
He might not want in the game, but he loves to be around it. Before the Houston playoff game, Vrabel meanders around the field, less like he is wandering and more like an ex-player’s stalk. He occasionally jumps in drills, half-heartedly covering TreVeyon Henderson and Rhamondre Stevenson as they catch 5-yard passes during warmups.
As Maye gets loose a few minutes later, Vrabel sees something he doesn’t like and comes over to talk to him. But he doesn’t do the standard coach conversation setup. Instead of catching Maye’s eye and standing in front of him, Vrabel sidles up beside his quarterback and mashes his shoulder against Maye’s, going through a series of hand motions to make his point. He talks into the ear hole of Maye’s helmet, and Maye nods at the end and goes back to warming up. Vrabel detaches from the shoulder connection and leaves.
Vrabel drifts around the field for a bit more before two lines form around the Patriots’ tunnel, signaling that the bulk of the team — literally and figuratively — is about to come out. The PA announcer riles up the crowd to welcome the Patriots’ offensive and defensive linemen, and 65,000 fans go wild. So does Vrabel. He comes over and stands among the giants as they team out onto the field. Vrabel laughs and claps while they run past him. He looks so happy. These are his people.
He especially lights up around his defensive tackles. Starters Christian Barmore and Milton Williams are both Vrabel favorites and also the core of how the Patriots want to push passing pockets up the middle on defense. They both call him «Vrabes» more than «Mike» or «Coach» or anything else. One week earlier, Vrabel had gassed them up before the Chargers game by emphasizing the need to «big-dog» on game day, and he told the whole team throughout the week that, «We might need to spill some blood.»
Justin Herbert and the offense that day in a claustrophobic 16-3 game that will probably be nightmare fuel for the rest of Herbert’s career. As the clock wound down, Vrabel came over to congratulate Williams on the sideline. Vrabel, of course, isn’t an arm’s-length fist bump guy. He got into Williams the way any Linebacker-itsu practitioner might, and the two walloped together aggressively enough that Vrabel came out of the gratitude tussle with a very festive bloody lip that went viral. «I don’t think he meant that he was going to spill his own blood,» linebacker Jack Gibbens says. «But I think he loved it.»
The geography of Vrabel is one thing that comes up again and again with his players — in interviews with 14 Patriots players, every single one mentions that Vrabel is always near them. «The perspective he has playing at such a high level, he comes into the job with that perspective,» veteran backup QB Joshua Dobbs says. «He is consistent every day. He does a great job of creating a relationship, even with new players. Through those interactions, he’s able to demand the most out of us each and every day.»
Vrabel says he goes out of his way to walk around the weight room and cafeteria when players are there. He can’t do 53 one-on-one conversations every week, but he can have nonstop dialogue with everybody, even in small groups, where players feel that he is invested in them personally.
«I try to be as approachable as possible,» Vrabel says. «I think the biggest thing is getting out of your office. Just because your door is always open doesn’t mean players will come in and talk.»
Vrabel comes to position meetings almost every day, at least to show his face, but usually with some specific feedback, sometimes good, sometimes bad. One player who asked not to be identified said that he was caught off guard, in a positive way, when he signed with the Patriots and saw Vrabel popping into meetings so often, and that those meetings were often a half-hour long, usually with individualized coaching.
«The team I was with before, the meetings would be two or three minutes long, and I don’t remember the head coach ever coming in,» he says. «My experience in the NFL had been that the head coach was more of a CEO who delegated. With the Patriots, we have more of a consistent identity, and the identity is Vrabes.»
«PACK YOUR IDENTITY.»
Vrabel says this to players so much that it has been instilled in them to say it, too.
«Identity has to travel,» Boutte says as the team gets ready for the trip to Denver.
«We pack our identity,» Stevenson says.
«We take our identity with us on the plane,» Bryant says.
The phrase is a reminder to them that they need to be as unwavering as he is. The original point of the saying had been to encourage them to be the same team on the road as they are in Foxborough. But «pack your identity» seems to have simply morphed into the Patriots’ identity, regardless of time, date and place. It worked: With the win in Denver, the Patriots became the first team in NFL history to go 9-0 on the road in a single season.
Vrabel bristles a little when credit gets thrown his way for turning around a franchise that went 4-13 two years in a row and is now headed to the Super Bowl. «I do this for the players,» Vrabel says. «I’ve been in their position. I have, and it’s amazing. I want other people to feel that feeling. Trust me, I’m fine. I do this for the players, to be able to experience this with their families and with the other coaches.»
In Denver, the Patriots are out of whack from the first snap. The Broncos take a 7-0 lead and are threatening to expand that margin as the crowd romps in the stands. Vrabel is expressive on the sidelines, but he seems more encouraging than angry. His movements ebb and flow almost exactly like the game in front of him, with 10 seconds of action and then 30 seconds standing in place, legs spread into a triangle, chest hunched over like a linebacker scanning the backfield. He roves up and down the sideline to wherever the ball is, applauding guys as they come out and riling up players on their way in. He probably gets 10,000 steps in every quarter.
His pulse never gets too high or low, and neither does his team’s on this day. The Patriots claw back in the second half as a staggering snow-and-wind sandwich descends onto Empower Field. By the time the Patriots finish off a 10-7 win to get to the Super Bowl, the mountain air has gone from bitter to downright mean. It’s so smothering that at various points in the second half, a few birds could be seen flying into the stadium and then struggling to be able to figure out how to get back out.
As the clock winds down, Vrabel runs out to midfield and shakes hands with Broncos coach Sean Payton. Then he whirls around and around and around for the next 10 minutes, belly-laughing and body-locking a slew of his players. He seems to be accounting for how this special occasion will force him to skip his usual hug drive-through in the tunnel in favor of standing on a makeshift stage to receive the Lamar Hunt Trophy as AFC champions. As Jim Nantz & Co. are setting up for the presentation, Vrabel is smothering anybody and everybody who comes within a third-and-manageable of him.
Once everything is set up, Vrabel, Maye and Patriots owner Robert Kraft all go onto the stage. Maye is somehow sleeveless as he accepts the trophy in the middle of what has become Antarctica over the past two hours. Maye talks to Nantz, then looks around and asks what he should do with the trophy. Nantz tells him he can take it with him and Maye disappears off the stage with it.
Every player has congregated around the stage, but the cold gets too ferocious for even the thickest-skinned Pats. Players start running down the field and out through the visitors tunnel the second the ceremony seems to be winding down. Vrabel notices and looks over a few times, like he’s in absolute bliss as AFC champions and absolute agony that he can’t be doing his normal expression of gratitude.
A few minutes later, the presentation is over and Vrabel finally can head for the tunnel. He preps for his usual greetings, but this time lots of surprise guests appear in addition to players. Several staff members, all cloaked like they’re about to scale Everest, tangle up with him in fits of laughing, grunting and grappling, with their winter jackets making whoosh noises in the background. Vrabel’s wife and two adult sons receive tender greetings from him, with Vrabel saying, «How about that?» to his oldest, Tyler.
Not long after, some players filter in. Vrabel is back in his element. Everybody who drifts near him gets a dose of Linebacker-itsu. After 10 minutes or so, as the rush of players dwindles, Vrabel rocks back and forth on his feet and looks around. He doesn’t want to miss anybody… but he also doesn’t want to miss the second part of the celebration, this time behind closed doors. The scene in Denver is a total mess, with stragglers in all different versions of pads and uniforms, AFC champion hats and shirts, all over the stadium. Finally, after about 10 minutes of hearing the siren call of Super Bowl-bound people yelling from the locker room, Vrabel heads in, too.
Two security guards look at each other, then toward the field, trying to decide whether to close the doors behind Vrabel. They slowly let the doors begin to shut before one last player comes motoring in. It’s Boutte, hero of the divisional round win, and he is carrying with him a prize: the Lamar Hunt Trophy that Maye had wandered off with a half-hour earlier. Boutte sneaks through the doors before they close behind him. About five seconds later, presumably when his teammates see him and their hardware enter the locker room, a massive roar erupts.
Over the next 15 minutes, Vrabel chugs a beer with some linemen, then gives a speech where he yells, «Warriors …» and the entire team screams back, «Come out and plaaaay,» an homage to the 1979 cult classic movie, «The Warriors.» He’d shown the movie to the team at one point, and, even to his surprise, the players liked it and gravitated toward the battle cry. Now, when he screams the first part of his call-and-response, Vrabel anchors down his body before turning his head up toward the ceiling, cupping his hands around his mouth and letting fly with «Come out and play.»
He speaks for a minute and gets ready to call the team in for one final huddle in the middle of the locker room. But Kraft interrupts — he wants to give a game ball to the man responsible for all of this: Vrabel. Kraft is 84 years old, a small person but a giant figure, both in this locker room and in modern football. So, when Vrabel takes the ball and shakes Kraft’s hand, the ensuing hug is about the most gentle embrace that Vrabel seems capable of. As soon as he unlocks from Kraft, Vrabel turns toward the team and screams once more, «Warriors!»
About an hour later, the stadium is virtually empty except for five enormous buses pulled down near the Patriots’ locker room. A small group of fans chants for players as they leave, but the fans eventually get chased off.
Maye finishes his postgame media commitments and comes out with some bags for the ride. He stops at a table to survey the drink options set up on a table close to the buses. He eventually settles on a can of strawberry mandarin Fresca before wobbling over to the bus with his luggage.
Bags are dropped off everywhere, and Patriots employees are hustling to make sure all of the gear ends up underneath the right bus. At 5:32, all five buses roar to life with Patriots players and coaches ready to drive off toward the Super Bowl. Everything has been packed — including their identity.
