Bedard: Boston College's Bill O'Brien shares his unique insight on Mike Vrabel's return to the Patriots

Boston College coach Bill O'Brien is no stranger to the Patriots after his five-year stint as an assistant coach in Foxborough. He also has unique insight into new Patriots coach Mike Vrabel. O'Brien was an assistant when Vrabel was a player, hired Vrabel as an assistant with the Texans, and both went head to head four times in the AFC South (they split 2-2). We caught up with O'Brien on Sunday to get his reaction to Vrabel being named the next head coach of the Patriots.

GB: You had Mike on your staff. You went against him in the AFC South ... What's your reaction to the news?

BOB: Yeah, I was very happy for the Patriots and for Mike. I knew, obviously Mike from when I coached with the Patriots the first time around. Mike was the type of guy, no matter what position you had on the coaching staff, he knew everybody. So I was quality control/wide receiver coach while Mike was there, and we got to know each other. And then when I went to Penn State, I tried to hire him at Penn State - he wasn't going to leave Ohio State. And then he was one of the first guys I hired in Houston and did a great job coaching. I always tell people, look at the development of guys like Whitney Mercilus, Jadeveon Clowney, Brian Cushing when we got there, Mike did all that, Mike coached the shit out of those guys. Then he was the defensive coordinator in '17, we weren't very good, we had a lot of injuries. And then he got the head job at the Titans, and then we coached against him, and had battles and went back and forth. Just a very well-coached team, very tough team. We had similar type teams, you know, Houston and Tennessee, when I was there. He just did a great job. And he's the thing about Mike, he's a great friend. He's a good guy. He's a man's man. He knows a lot about your family. He's just a really good, good person, you know, good guy. It's a great choice by the Krafts.

Some Patriots fans think this is just going back to the glory days, going back to how Bill Belichick did things, but they're really different aren't they?

There'll be some things that are, you know, obviously keys to success, right? Like situational football and things like that. But Mike's got a really good personality, relative to coaching the team, being in front of the team. All of us have different styles. Mike has a unique style as to how he deals with an individual player or a position group, or obviously the team. Mike's worked for Urban Meyer. He worked for me. He's worked with different staffs, different coaches, the people he worked with at Tennessee. So he knows that there are different ways to skin a cat, and he'll bring his own style to the Patriots. No, no, I wouldn't say that at all relative to you're hiring somebody that's just gonna do it exactly like Bill. I mean, I tell people all the time, Greg, there's only one Bill/ Like there will never be another Bill. There's not gonna be anybody that ... Mike certainly has his own style and his own way of doing things.

In Houston, did he do a good job of reaching guys individually and getting them to play at a higher level?

That's probably one of the things that he does the best. That's a strength of his, that he has a way of getting to know somebody and understanding where the guy comes from, what makes the guy tick, how to inspire a guy. We always talk about not necessarily motivating somebody, but just inspiring somebody to be more than what they are. And that's one of his strengths. He does a really good job of that. He's very smart, right? So he knows how coach the positions. He knows both sides of the ball, special teams. He's got a good base of knowledge that'll really help those guys get better at every position.

He went to the Browns and helped with the tight ends and offensive line, and learned how they approached analytics. Does that surprise you?

Yeah, I knew that he was doing that, and that didn't surprise me at all, because he's the type of guy that he could probably go coach the offensive line for the Cleveland Browns, or coach the tight ends. He understands what it what it takes to teach those positions, because he's put the time in. I remember one time we did a staff clinic. So I gave each guy, like an area to kind of present to the subject as present to the staff. And he had tackling. So he went through all the different types of tackles that took place that year, in whatever year it was, 2016 in the NFL. Side tackles, straight-on tackles, sideline tackles, angle ... I mean, just all kinds of different tackles. And he presented it to the staff, and had different ways to teach tackling, and different ways to think about tackling, how to take on a stiff arm. It was really, really good. And I think that's what he is. He puts a lot of time into all facets of football. And I think that's why you saw that he could, you know, help out with the offensive line in Cleveland this year. 

You guys locked horns in the AFC South ... what did you guys have to do to beat a Mike Vrabel team, what were you looking out for?

We needed to be very physical. They were going to be physical. Offensively, we had to be ready for their third-down package, because they had a really, really good third-down package on defense. I would say that defensively, we had to obviously be ready to stop at that time, Derrick Henry, but also, you know, their ability to us play action - they had a really good play-action game because of the fact that they had Derrick Henry. And then I think on special teams, you had to expect the unexpected. In the first game that we played him, when he went to Tennessee, they beat us. One of the reasons they beat us was they faked the punt and they kind of knew how we were scheming up our punt block, and they saw it, they faked it, and they, I think they scored on it. I think we lost by a touchdown (actually, 20-17). And that's probably one of the reasons why we lost.

So from that point forward, you had to be ready to expect the unexpected and be very, very smart about how you were approaching situations and things like that. And I think that's why he brought out the best in us, we had some wild games. I think we had a game there, you know, I don't know, towards the end, before I got fired, where, you know, Watson and Hopkins, we kind of had a back-and-forth type of game and then we had a tough, couple tough games at home. But yeah, it was, it was always a battle, and you knew you were going against a very physical team.

There's some people who look at those Titans teams, how they played ground and pound and conservative, and think that's coming here. Did he just use what he had, or should we expect conservative football?

No, he will look at who he has, and he will make the best of who he has, and he will use them the right way. Like, I think he learned a lot about that in his coaching career, like, when he went to Ohio State and then with us in Houston. He learned a lot about making sure that you were using the guys that you had the right way. And I think that's what he'll do in New England. In Tennessee, he had King Henry, and then he had a really good defense, and he had, you know, he had Jeffrey Simmons on the defensive line, and he had  Harold Landry rushing the passer. So he did different things to free those guys up. And I think when he looks at the New England roster, he'll say, 'Well, look, I've got obviously, one of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL. And, you know, we'll do things to make this guy successful.' I think there's no doubt about that. It won't be as much, I don't, think ground and pound as it was in Tennessee, not with Drake Maye.

Are you looking forward to seeing what transpires from Chestnut Hill?

I'm thrilled. Look, I'm glad he's moving back to Massachusetts. I texted with him this morning. I can't wait for him to come up and speak to our Boston College team. Already put my dibs in on that. I'm very excited. He's a great guy. He's a great friend of mine, and I'm excited for the Patriots, for him and his family. He's got an awesome family, his wife, Jenn. His sons, Tyler and Carter are great guys. Tyler played here at BC, was an offensive lineman. So yeah I think everybody in Boston should be fired up for the Vrabels coming back.