While it’s true that the New England Patriots reached into the team’s past to secure the franchise’s future, Mike Vrabel’s arrival does so in more ways than Robert Kraft may care to believe. It wasn’t long ago that the franchise wriggled itself free of the Bill Belichick regime, in part, to get a hand back on the steering wheel.
Despite all the inferences to the contrary, Belichick was, until the day he left, an emperor in Foxborough; the body of water to which all channels led. As an owner, Kraft enjoyed the spoils of this setup and, eventually, soured on the frustrations of it. Despite owning the team, it had to have felt like Belichick was truly more powerful than the person signing his checks.
And so with Jerod Mayo’s hiring last offseason came an effort to make New England feel like something else: A franchise thriving on new blood and new ideas. Much to the joy of every corporate jargon bingo card maker, there was talk of collaboration, transparency and all the other meaningless words a boss might say at a meeting no one wants to attend.
Fast-forward just a handful of months—months!—and Kraft dismantled his pet project in order to reclaim the familiar embrace of a true strongman who is going to want operations to look, sound and feel a certain way. Don’t call it Belichick Lite. It’s more like taking McDonald’s out of your diet to free yourself up for more Burger King.
This isn’t a knock on Vrabel, to be clear. As I’ve noted time and time again, his personality was a kind of saving grace in Cleveland a year ago. Coaches he worked with loved his energy, passion and humility; he’s the kind of guy who remembers birthdays, weddings … that kind of mensch. But, there’s also the fact that, in order for the Tennessee Titans to have gotten rid of him after his run as head coach from 2018 to ’23—the owners there, also in search of this fleeting idea of collaboration and unity and togetherness—there had to be some Belichick flavoring in Vrabel. There had to be a desire for control and a growing contempt over time for anyone who saw it differently.
Unless the Chicago Bears can recover footing in the Ben Johnson sweepstakes, there is almost no way New England will lose the battle of optics during this carousel. Vrabel is and should be considered a home run hire. He was a combination of the best and most proven candidate on the market this cycle. Simply by virtue of how much the Patriots’ roster can improve in one offseason from its current state, it’s not hard to imagine Vrabel orchestrating the biggest win-loss turnaround in the league as well.
But I do wonder what it will end up costing Kraft and the rest of the team’s decision-makers in terms of the freedom they tasted for the better part of just one season and one offseason.
To be clear, Vrabel is not going to come in with a sleeveless shirt on and begin mumbling in front of everyone while planning some black ops study into the efficacy of sleep chambers (as his predecessor once did). In public, I imagine he’ll achieve the ideal Kraftian middle ground of interpersonal finesse and private hardass. As a person, he is completely different. Friends say he has a grating but unquestionably good sense of humor. He’s a heart-on-the-sleeve kind of guy.
Behind the curtain, though, does Kraft really expect the vibe organizationally to be that dissimilar? Again, maybe no one will ever take it as far as Belichick, but the best of his disciples do appreciate the value in becoming so educated, so prepared, so in control that there is no kink in the messaging because everything and anything is derivative of one man. It will look different in principle but, if Vrabel succeeds and continues to legitimize the hiring, there will probably be moments that feel like Kraft never moved on from Belichick at all.
And if that is the case, how will we end up viewing the end of the Belichick era? Because, to me, it seems like this hiring of Vrabel is a kind of tacit admission that what Kraft had wasn’t all that bad and what he wanted may have simply been a fleeting pipe dream. To me, it makes Kraft seem admirably human. From time to time we all lose touch with the things in life we should appreciate. Then, you scratch and claw to get them back.
This came at a steep price tag. Kraft derailed the coaching career of a longtime Patriot and had to endure the embarrassment of his quotes about Mayo, and the whimsical process that led to Kraft hand selecting him, resurfacing. Multiple reputations took a hit.
Of course, there is no place like home. Vrabel emerging as a top candidate in about half a dozen other cities this offseason reminded Kraft as much.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Hiring Mike Vrabel Required an Admission by Robert Kraft.
