The Patriots have undergone significant change in each of the last two offseasons, most of which has been closely tied to the coaching staff.
Bill Belichick was fired in January of 2024, with several members of his staff following him out the door shortly thereafter. Jerod Mayo was then hired, bringing aboard several new assistants while elevating others, before being unceremoniously fired after just one season. Mike Vrabel has since been hired to restart the rebuild, bringing another new staff with him.
How will things change this time around?
Vrabel, for one, won’t be quite as tyrannical as the guy who was serving during his last stint in New England.
“I think that if you can identify young quality control coaches — we have to have energy,” Vrabel told reporters in Indianapolis on Tuesday. “It’s a long season. I don’t want anybody in there until midnight, coming back at four in the morning. I don’t think that’s healthy, I don’t think that’s healthy for the individual, I don’t think that’s healthy for their families. I think the people that benefit the least are the players… If we don’t have enough people to remain efficient, sometimes people get worn down and I don’t want to see that happen. We don’t want people standing around and doing nothing, so we’ll make sure that everyone has a job and a role on our staff.”
New England has long been known as a place where coaches would sleep on cots to keep up with the grueling schedule set by Belichick. Vrabel is uninterested in keeping up that tradition, no matter how successful it was for those who coached him a couple of decades back.
Josh McDaniels will surely be thankful for that.
