Giardi: Vrabel provides a vision for the future

FOXBOROUGH - Well, that felt like a football coach, didn't it? No talk of north stars or breaking down silos. Mike Vrabel's introductory press conference revolved around what has been the man's lifeblood and something that he feels in his soul. It's football and all that goes into it.

Officially named the 16th head coach in franchise history, Vrabel has quite a few questions to answer as he does his best to return the Patriots to respectability. He is inheriting a front office not of his own choosing, at least not yet. That didn't exactly go well his final year in Tennessee when Ran Carthon was foisted upon him as the GM in that final season, even if his experience suggested Carthon be in a different role. Then there's the whole roster thing. To call the Pats one of the worst groups in the league is being kind. They just might be at the very bottom. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose. And, of course, there's the question of who will comprise his coaching staff, particularly the coordinator spots, and what system Vrabel wants to put in place. Is that it? For now.

Having lived through Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk pushing a more collaborative effort, I asked Vrabel if he had the final say on the roster and the draft.

"The most important thing is that there's a shared organizational vision for what we want to do, how we want to work, and how we want to acquire players," he said diplomatically. "There are numerous ways to acquire players: free agency, trade, draft, post-draft process, and post-training camp. So again, just excited to get to sit down with Elliot and his staff."

Vrabel admitted he and Wolf had conversed over the weekend, but much more work must be done.

"I need to sit down with his staff and figure out where what we need to do, and I'm confident that those types of decisions are all going to sort themselves out," Vrabel added. "We don't want to always be on the same page. That's not the environment that we want to create. But we want to have a shared vision. And there are also different ways to get there, and I'm embracing that everybody's going to have a different personality. I don't want my staff to be like me. I don't want all our players to be similar. We're going to have diverse ideas, and that's critical to have those types of conversations. It's something that I'm looking forward to."

The 49-year-old head coach and former 15-year pro reportedly wants to bring around his former interim GM in Tennessee, Ryan Cowden, with him. Cowden has since been allowed to leave by the Giants for the Patriots, but Vrabel wouldn't confirm that during the presser.

"Nothing has been finalized. Nothing has been determined," he said. "As with any staff, there's going to be turnover. There may be new coaches and new faces, some that I will have history with, and some that I won't. And that's what the interview process is, and that's what we're going to do."

That is not how the process went last year. In fact, there was a reluctance to bring aboard high-profile coaches, or ones with immediate dreams of becoming a head coach, so as not to create the potential for conflict with Jerod Mayo. Instead, there were internal promotions and several professional coaches who were either just beginning their journeys or had settled or been pigeonholed into specific roles. There have been stories linking Vrabel to Josh McDaniels on offense or Shane Bowen on defense (at this point, the Giants appear to be hanging on to him). 

"I will tell you this, as long as I'm the head coach here, our coaches will have three simple jobs - and they sound simple - and they're probably not as simple as we want to make them be, but they want to teach, they want to develop, and they want to inspire our players by making a connection. We're going to make strong connections with our players so that we can coach 'em, and we can push them, and I really believe in this system. I believe in having great teachers, great developers, and coaches that will inspire our men on making a connection so that they know exactly what makes them tick."

It's easy to look at what the Titans looked like on offense and automatically think that's what it will be here. Having covered those teams extensively in my previous job, I disagree. Yes, those teams were run-heavy. They should have been. Derrick Henry is a unicorn, a man built like a defensive end but with the speed of a sprinter. And durable. They fed him because he could handle it.

But Vrabel allowed Matt LaFleur and then Arthur Smith to put their stamp on it, including devising ways to get the best out of Ryan Tannehill. They did this for several seasons. Tannehill preferred bigger wideouts with larger catch radiuses. That's what the Titans got him. A.J. Brown. Julio Jones (though he never could get healthy). Even DeAndre Hopkins. 

"We mentioned things like being aggressive but not reckless," said Vrabel about how he wants to play offense. "We have to be able to take chances. How do we create 'X '(explosive) plays without just having to throw the ball down the field 50 yards and just sit there taking shots, right? The creativity - we want to be versatile enough - if the players can handle it. I want to look at zone scheme in the run game, being able to run, you know, gap scheme to things the defense may do. Be under center. Being in the gun. But it's also important to understand, everybody has access to this, and everybody has some experience with different types of offense, but it's what the players can get good at. How much can you reasonably do?

"You don't want to dabble in things. We're not going to dabble in RPOs when the quarterback - that's not a strength of his. And then being able to read and pull the ball and throw - there's so much nickel pressure. How do you want to handle pressure? All these answers and different things that defenses are doing: more split safety defenses, more simulated pressures, more disguised cover two, and then being able to go on the ball and try to be able to use an offense that goes on the ball at times and dictate the tempo, cadence. But again, it'll be based on what the players can understand and what they can handle. And we're not going to put things that make them slow. Somebody told me a long time ago you can't tell the difference between a player that's afraid to do it or doesn't know how to do it. And so they kind of just stand there with that look, and we're not going to stand. We're going to be moving. We're going to demand effort and finish."

Vrabel was drawn to New England in part because of Drake Maye. He admitted that in the press conference. If he deems Maye ready to handle the offense and throw 40 times a game, that will be the message to whoever assumes the play-caller job. But as he did in Tennessee, Vrabel will be hands-on with the quarterback, mentioning he will talk with Maye about game management, situational play, and leading the huddle. But he also acknowledged how teams win in this era of football.

"We have to be a very efficient passing football team," he said. "When you look at statistically what wins in the National Football League, our ability to affect the other team's quarterback and our ability to provide for an efficient quarterback and passing game is a high contributor to success, and there are a lot of ways to do that..."

What that will look like is to be determined, but the Pats have a stronger foundation now than they did at any point in the last year or two. The floor has been raised, and while we're far from knowing the ceiling, today was a reminder of what a head coach looks and sounds like, and that there's a vision for the future that doesn't require reading some old treasure map and a flashlight. That's the biggest win this organization has had in a long time.