Why Mike Vrabel faces a massive task in rebuilding Patriots

Henry McKenna

NFL Reporter

The New England Patriots, apparently, are not in the business of developing coaches. They hired Mike Vrabel on Sunday morning to replace Jerod Mayo, whose tenure as New England’s coach lasted shorter than one calendar year.

The appeal with Vrabel is simple: He is what the Patriots hoped Mayo might someday be. Vrabel is ready-made for playoff-level coaching, but his new team is almost as far from playoff level as a roster can get.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft said he decided to fire Mayo because the team “regressed” over the year, with an upset over the Bengals in Week 1 but then failing to post a respectable win past that point.

“I feel terrible for Jerod because I put him in an untenable situation,” Kraft said Monday. “He just needed more time before taking the job. In the end, I’m a fan of this team first. And now, I have to go out and find a coach who can get us back to the playoffs and hopefully, championships.”

There are the expectations. Laid out.

Get New England back to the playoffs. And the Super Bowl.

That’s what having Bill Belichick and Tom Brady for two decades will do to an organization. Those guys set the sites as high as two men can in the NFL.

How quickly does Kraft expect Vrabel to make a playoff run?

Because this team isn’t close.

At no point this season did New England look like it had the requisite talent to make the playoffs. While quarterback Drake Maye is as promising as any rookie in this year’s class, he also struggled to close out games, with a handful of late turnovers that essentially ended his team’s hopes of winning.

He needed help: on the offensive line, at receiver, on the defensive line, at linebacker.

That was obvious. But the solution isn’t clear-cut.

New England had trouble acquiring talent last year, with a whiff on a free-agency flirtation with Calvin Ridley and another miss in trade talks with the 49ers regarding Brandon Aiyuk. The Patriots wanted to upgrade at receiver. They were ready to spend picks and cash. And still, they couldn’t land one.

This year will be another tough market for weapons. If the Bengals extend or franchise tag Tee Higgins, then it’s grim. Receivers Chris Godwin, Stefon Diggs, DeAndre Hopkins, Amari Cooper and Tyler Lockett (a potential cap casualty) should be available — but they’re all in the WR2 phase of their careers, at best.

The Patriots’ best bet to land a WR1 would be in the trade market. But is Deebo Samuel worth the risk after a series of unproductive seasons? How about Michael Pittman? Would the Seahawks even trade DK Metcalf?

It’s the same problem at tackle, with the Ravens’ Ronnie Stanley scheduled to hit free agency — but not likely to make it there because of an imminent franchise tag. You can work down the list, and it’s not pretty. It’s not where you’d normally want to put tens of millions of dollars.

But the Patriots, who have around $120 million in cap space, will have to take some risks in free agency (which they were unwilling to do last year). Vrabel’s reputation around the league is solid, and with Maye putting up good tape, the two of them should be able to attract a better free-agent class than New England did last year. But that’s not saying much.

Is Mike Vrabel a solid fit for Patriots head coach?

If Vrabel and Maye hope to win quickly, and impress Kraft, the Patriots will need to do what Mayo got in trouble for saying last offseason: Burn some cash.

New England will want to rebuild in the draft, which is Kraft’s preferred method. But the owner also showed his impatience this year. Developing through the draft takes time, particularly if the 2024 draft class is as big of a group of busts as it seems — outside of Maye, of course.

Worse still, Mayo’s final act as coach was to beat the Bills in Week 18, which sent New England from picking No. 1 overall to No. 4 in the 2025 draft. That’s a gulf worth roughly a future first-round and future second-round pick in a trade. And it’s likely the Patriots would’ve tried to make exactly that move by dealing Colorado QB Shedeur Sanders to the highest bidder.

When FOX Sports spoke with Patriots VP of player personnel Eliot Wolf before Week 18, he said the team didn’t quite get the “internal development” it had hoped for out of the 2024 draft class.

That’s where Vrabel needs to shine. His staff needs to elevate players like receiver Ja’Lynn Polk, whom the scouting department thought was “plug and play” yet managed just 12 catches for 87 yards and two touchdowns as a rookie. That’s a typical single-game stat line for Ladd McConkey, whom the Chargers took in the spot from which New England traded down.

You can’t fault a team for wanting to accrue picks in the draft, which can be such a crapshoot. It’s just that, except for Maye, the Patriots’ 2024 draft class has yet to produce. Rookie offensive linemen Layden Robinson and Caedan Wallace didn’t yet look ready to contribute. Nor did Polk or Javon Baker, a fellow rookie receiver. The Patriots picked those four players in rounds 2 through 4.

The volume approach has yet to bear fruit.

To fix the problems, Vrabel will need to do basically everything Mayo could not: hire a coaching staff capable of making a roster look better than it is; develop internal talent for the long term; recruit external talent in a tough offseason. And it wouldn’t hurt if the staff turned Maye into a top-10 QB.

That’s a long to-do list.

That’s a lofty to-do list.

Vrabel is inheriting a house without walls, without a kitchen, without a bathroom. All he has is a frame (and, yes, that’s Maye in this metaphor). Kraft seems to be saying he wants to live in that home by September.

If that’s true, Vrabel is in trouble.

Prior to joining FOX Sports as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.

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