In 2009 Mike Vrabel got the call from the Patriots that the team was trading him to the Kansas City Chiefs. Eight years of service in New England, with three titles, and the linebacker was out of there a year too early perhaps rather than a year too late like so many others who have played for that team under Bill Belichick.
Before this week he had made five trips back to Foxborough. Twice he came back to face the Patriots as a Houston Texans assistant coach, twice more as the head coach of the Tennessee Titans. And then, in October 2023, he returned during the Titans bye week to be inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame.
And now, after an in-person interview with Robert and Jonathan Kraft on Thursday in Boston, Vrabel won't just be a visitor to anymore. According to sources the Patriots have agreed to terms with Vrabel to be their next head coach, cinching the former NFL Coach of the Year before any other team with a head coach opening could fill its vacancy.
His hire signals (another) new day in New England as the Krafts hope to end the three-season playoff drought -- the longest in their stewardship -- and re-establish the dominance once enjoyed by Vrabel in those uniforms.
"I'm just so appreciative of everybody, that we held each other accountable because there was trust," Vrabel said during his 2023 Patriots Hall of Fame induction as he thanked those who were part of those dynasty years. "There was an understanding, there was a respect that you could say things that needed to be said to each other.
"And every day that's what I'm trying to recreate wherever I coach, and now it's in Tennessee obviously, but I'm trying to recreate what we had in that locker room. And I don't know if we'll get it, but we're going to try every day. I'm going to try because nothing was more important than the team. Not your feelings. Not your stats, not your paycheck. Not what you've done in the past. Nothing was more important than football team."
The Patriots wanted to move quickly to get the 49-year-old Vrabel. After his firing in Tennessee -- more on that later -- he consulted with the Browns this past year, eventually serving as the de facto offensive line coach. (Cleveland would fire its actual offensive line coach a day after the season.) He requested his release from his contract before the end of the regular season so he could begin in-person interviews with teams, and Browns GM Andrew Berry granted it.
The Jets interviewed him on Jan. 3 and believed it went well. The Bears quickly got in line and interviewed him Wednesday. By Thursday he was in Boston to meet with the Patriots. The Saints had hoped to at least speak with him, if not get a formal interview. It's unclear if any real conversations took place.
To hire Vrabel as quickly as they did, the Patriots had to hasten their search process. NFL rules have been tweaked in recent years in an effort to slow down the hiring process for coaches and general managers. But in more than a quarter-century of ownership, the Krafts have never done a robust search for either position thanks in large part to the success of Belichick.
Teams must conduct in-person interviews with at least two external candidates who are persons of color or women before officially hiring a coach or GM, per the league's Rooney Rule. Last spring, the Patriots did just that -- and only that -- before installing Eliot Wolf as the primary football executive, a qualified candidate who was already in the building and whom most of the league expected to get the job.
This week, the Patriots flew Byron Leftwich and Pep Hamilton into town to interview for head coach. Neither Black man has coached in the NFL since 2022, with Hamilton last serving as Houston's offensive coordinator and Leftwich as Tampa Bay's OC.
And Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn turned down the Patriots' offer. He has requests from every team with a vacancy and plans to interview with them all except New England. Glenn declining the interview was met with praise across the league from coaches and personnel members of all colors who, in conversations with CBS Sports, believed the Krafts were making a sham of the Rooney Rule.
The Patriots did conduct a virtual interview with Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson on Friday that he likely used as preparation for jobs he's taking seriously. Johnson, who was a top-two candidate across the league along with Vrabel, lined the Patriots up first in his order as he eyes potential gigs with the Bears, Raiders and Jaguars.
If there were ever interest from the Jaguars or the Raiders, they were always firmly behind New England. Tom Brady and Richard Seymour were both teammates of Vrabel with the Patriots, but their minority ownership in the Raiders clearly wasn't enough to move him to Las Vegas after the Raiders dispatched head coach Antonio Pierce and GM Tom Telesco in separate moves during the week.
Brady and Seymour played with him, but Robert Kraft loves him. The Raiders don't have a quarterback, and Drake Maye appears to be a guy, in football parlance. Their entire AFC West opponents made the playoffs with Hall of Famers across the landscape, while Buffalo has been waiting for a legitimate division challenger in the post-Brady years.
The move to Mayo
The decision to even have a vacancy in New England was a gut-wrenching one for Robert Kraft. The Patriots drafted Mayo in 2008 and he played eight seasons for the team at linebacker. In 2019 he joined Belichick's staff as an assistant coach, and that year he went on a trip to Israel with Kraft where he made a lasting impression on the owner.
In Belichick's final years as head coach -- even as he won a Super Bowl -- Kraft believed he had Belichick's successor. Following the 2022 season when teams began requesting permission to interview Mayo for their own head coach positions, Kraft adjusted Mayo's contract to make him the coach-in-waiting upon Belichick's eventual departure -- firing or otherwise.
A disastrous 2023 campaign accelerated that process. Belichick was out and, contractually, Mayo was in. A jovial introductory press conference with Kraft and Mayo showed that things would be different in New England. Less than a year later, Kraft was admitting he put Mayo in "an untenable situation" in the days following his firing.
The Patriots' roster was considered among the worst in the league, wrecked by years of draft and free agency misses. There were no reasonable expectations of a playoff run this past season, but it seemed the embarrassment was too much for Kraft. The close losses, the blowout losses, the public gaffes by Mayo, the semi-regular backtracking later all added up.
With about a month to go in the season, sources say the Krafts met with Mayo to discuss his preparation, vision and plan for the upcoming season. They left the meeting concerned about the direction of the franchise and whether Mayo was the right person to lead the group, despite Robert Kraft's years-long hand selection of the coach. Within hours of the Patriots final regular-season game, Kraft had fired Mayo and set his sights on Vrabel.
Homecoming
One must wonder how soon after Kraft saw Vrabel, dressed in his red Patriots Hall of Fame jacket speaking to the Gillette Stadium crowd at halftime in October 2023, that he had made a mistake.
"I don't want you to take this organization for granted," Vrabel said to New England fans. "I've been a lot of places, this is a special place with great leadership, great fans, great direction, and great coaching. Enjoy it, it's not like this everywhere."
The Titans were 2-4 and on their bye week, while the Patriots were 1-5 and off to their worst start in nearly three decades. Kraft didn't know yet he'd be dismissing Belichick at the end of the season with Mayo in waiting. He surely couldn't have known that Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk would do the same with Vrabel three months later.
Vrabel going to New England that week wasn't the cause of his firing in Tennessee, sources say, but it didn't help. She got "worn out" by Vrabel, according to sources. When the winning stopped, that's when she stopped with Vrabel.
Vrabel's years at the helm in Tennessee were the best in the franchise since the turn of the century with Jeff Fisher. His first four seasons all resulted in winning records, with three playoff appearances, an AFC title game showing and the 2021 NFL Coach of the Year award. An only child, Vrabel had a strong personality that was at times prickly, but there was no debating how good of a coach he was or his care for the team.
Vrabel's awareness of the importance of team is encapsulated in an anecdote shared by a source. Occasionally in team meetings in Tennessee, Vrabel would put up a photo of a staffer in the building, be it a cook or a maintenance worker. He'd ask the team if it knew that person's name, or how many kids that person had. He wanted the entire building to be together for a common goal.
Midway through the 2022 season, Adams Strunk fired general manager Jon Robinson with the team at 7-5. The Titans would lose the last five games of the season as the roster holes began to reveal themselves.
She hired 49ers executive Ran Carthon to be the general manager to pair with Vrabel, and the two men made it work, according to sources. Vrabel asked Carthon to consider keeping Ryan Cowden on his personnel staff, vouching for Cowden's work and appreciating their relationship that had been built since 2018.
Cowden, who had served as interim GM and who interviewed for the permanent job, stayed on through the 2023 draft but was not retained. Sources believe Cowden, who has spent the last two years with the Giants, will join Vrabel in New England in some personnel role that will be determined.
At the end of the 2023 season, Adams Strunk jettisoned Vrabel while keeping Carthon, whom she would go on to fire just one year later. Vrabel interviewed for jobs with the Chargers, Falcons and Panthers before being shut out last cycle. But with the continued struggles in Tennessee this season, along with the success of CEO-type head coaches like Dan Campbell, Jim Harbaugh, Dan Quinn and others, Vrabel's tenure in Tennessee has aged well and made him a top candidate this coaching cycle.
The only active coach who is also in his team's Hall of Fame, Vrabel is now tasked with turning around a franchise that he helped win half its Lombardis.
"He gets you two wins more than you should get because he's a dang good football coach," said a source. "He's an asshole, but he's a likeable one."
