The New England Patriots are turning to a figure from their glorious past as they try to recapture it. They hired Mike Vrabel as their coach Sunday, one week after firing Jerod Mayo.
The team announced the hire Sunday morning. The Patriots reached a contract agreement with Vrabel earlier Sunday, according to a person familiar with the deliberations. They dismissed Mayo last Sunday.
“He’s back!” the Patriots said in their announcement of the move.
Vrabel, 49, was a three-time Super Bowl winner with the Patriots during his playing career as a linebacker. He was the NFL coach of the year for the Tennessee Titans in the 2021 season and spent this season as a consultant for the Cleveland Browns.
He inherits a Patriots team that is coming off a 4-13 season under Mayo. The Patriots used a succession clause written into the contract of Mayo, then their linebackers coach, to promote him to head coach last January on the day after they parted with Bill Belichick, without having to conduct a search or comply with the NFL’s minority hiring requirements. Mayo, also a former Patriots linebacker, was the first Black head coach in franchise history.
But he lasted just one season as the successor to Belichick, who won six Super Bowl titles over 24 seasons with the Patriots. The team fired Mayo hours after its victory over the Buffalo Bills last Sunday in its season finale. That triumph cost the Patriots the top overall selection in this year’s draft.
Now it’s up to Vrabel to attempt to get the Patriots back to contender status. He perhaps has the advantage of being the successor to Belichick’s successor, rather than directly following such a coaching legend. He takes over a team that has had three straight losing seasons and is without a postseason victory since winning Super Bowl LIII in Feb. 2019. The Patriots have reached the playoffs twice since then, losing in the opening round both times.
Vrabel is a proven NFL winner, as a coach as well as a player. He coached the Titans to four straight winning seasons between the 2018 and 2021 seasons, and took them to the AFC championship game in the 2019 season. The Titans surprisingly fired him last January after two consecutive losing seasons.
He was an in-demand head coaching candidate this offseason. Vrabel also interviewed with the New York Jets and Chicago Bears, and was considered a candidate for the Las Vegas Raiders, New Orleans Saints and perhaps the Jacksonville Jaguars. Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback, was a Patriots teammate of Vrabel and now is a part-owner of the Raiders.
But Vrabel, a member of the Patriots’ Hall of Fame, ended up back with his most prominent former team. He played for the Patriots from 2001 to 2008.
The Patriots have a potential franchise quarterback in Drake Maye, who showed great promise at times as a rookie. But as their season-long struggles demonstrate, they also have plenty of holes on the roster. The Patriots do have a projected $130 million or so in salary cap space for next season, the most in the NFL. They also have the No. 4 pick in this year’s draft.
Some observers were critical of the Patriots for interviewing two coaches who are out of the NFL, Byron Leftwich and Pep Hamilton, to satisfy the NFL requirement that each team with a head coaching vacancy conduct in-person interviews with at least two minority candidates. Another minority coach, Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, reportedly declined the Patriots’ interview request.
The Patriots also interviewed Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. They become the first team to hire a head coach during this year’s hiring cycle. The Jets, Saints, Bears, Jaguars and Raiders continue their searches.