Former Patriots QB: Mike Vrabel will not ‘hold any punches’ dealing with front office
"He doesn't care about your feelings. He's going to get it right."
Mike Vrabel said all the right things on Monday when asked about collaborating with Eliot Wolf and New England’s front-office staff this offseason.
But count Vrabel’s former New England teammate Matt Cassel among those who think that the Patriots head coach will bring some much-needed accountability to a personnel department that whiffed on multiple decisions in recent years.
“He’s a guy that’s not going to hold any punches,” Cassel said on NBC Sports Boston’s Patriots Talk Podcast. “He doesn’t care about your feelings. He’s going to get it right. And so that will be an interesting dynamic to see how it all goes with Eliot Wolf and everybody else in that organization, because he will be the clear, defined leader.
“And I don’t think that he takes this job unless that was expressed to him that he’s going to have most of the control over this roster, over big decisions being made. That’s really, I feel, the only way this works.”
Wolf — New England’s de-facto GM — is reportedly staying on with the Patriots despite a disastrous 2024 season that cost Jerod Mayo his job after just one year as head coach.
While several issues hindered New England, Wolf’s poor roster construction and missteps during the 2024 NFL Draft (besides selecting Drake Maye) gave Mayo and an ill-prepared coaching staff little to work with.
Even if Vrabel referenced Wolf numerous times during his introductory press conference on Monday, the Patriots’ new coach is reportedly already bringing in some of his own staff to work alongside Wolf.
According to NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo, Ryan Cowden is being let out of his current contract with the New York Giants in order to join New England’s front office.
Vrabel and Cowden have plenty of history together, as Cowden served as as the vice president of personnel with the Titans during Vrabel’s head-coaching tenure in Tennessee.
Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer added that Cowden is expected to serve as Wolf’s de-facto No. 2 moving forward, although more changes could be in store in Foxborough as Vrabel begins to overhaul the organization’s coaching ranks and other staff members.
“When you come into a situation and you’ve got a GM in place or a player personnel guy and a new head coach, you have to make him feel comfortable that the decisions that are going to be made are going to be decisions that he wants the organization to go directionally,” Cassel noted. “And Mike, again, the one thing I’ll say, he doesn’t lack confidence. He knows what he wants to do and he’s going to go in and make his presence felt right away.”
Cassel’s comments fall in line with the thoughts shared by another one of Vrabel’s former Patriots teammates, Tedy Bruschi, over the weekend.
While Vrabel’s established coaching resume and presence should bring accountability and stability to New England’s locker room, Bruschi stressed that the Patriots’ higher-ups are also in need of a wake-up call with Vrabel now given the reins.
“Vrabel isn’t going to joke around, Vrabel is going to tighten the screws,” Bruschi said on ESPN Sunday. “In my opinion, there are some people in the front office that need to be told, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing and you need to take a step back.’ … “There are some people upstairs in the organization that want to be heard.
“And sometimes they’re going to have to take a bite of ‘humble pie’ and understand ‘your opinion doesn’t matter on this one,’ because there are people in the building that know more.”
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