Mike Vrabel explains why he got involved in Patriots-Commanders joint practice fight
"My job is to try to break those up and I don't mind doing it."
Patriots players got a kick out of Mike Vrabel‘s involvement in the fight that broke out with the Commanders in Wednesday’s joint practice, but New England’s head coach didn’t laugh too much about the matter.
In his first comments about the fight, Vrabel sternly explained why he felt the need to jump into a pile of Patriots and Commanders players pushing and shoving each other when he was asked about the incident on Sunday.
“I realized that Will [Campbell] and I were thinking the same thing — just trying to get the second guy off TreVeyon [Henderson] and they’re wrestling around,” Vrabel told reporters. “I just don’t want anything to happen to anybody. My job is to try to break those up and I don’t mind doing it, and that’s kind of how it went.”
The fight broke out after Henderson made a hard block on a Commanders player. Vrabel got into the pile that quickly formed as Campbell was also in the mix. A few moments later, the Patriots’ head coach emerged with blood on his face.
After practice, multiple New England players joked about Vrabel’s involvement. Wide receiver DeMario Douglas said that Vrabel told him, “You should have seen the other guy,” when he asked his coach what happened to him.
Some of the players also appreciated Vrabel’s willingness to get in the mix like that.
“He’s right there with us, man. I think that player comes out in him a little bit too,” tight end Hunter Henry said.
Drake Maye shared that Vrabel said that the team would go back and later watch the film of their head coach getting into the fight. However, Vrabel wasn’t the one to show them the footage of the fight.
“I didn’t show the team. They all looked at it, obviously, in their meeting rooms because guys were laughing at me,” Vrabel said.
When the Patriots took on the Commanders in their preseason opener on Friday, there appeared to be a minor wound on Vrabel’s right cheek from the incident. The wound appeared to be gone, though, at Sunday’s training camp practice.
In the actual game against Washington, New England showed more fight than its opponent. It cruised to a 48-18 win, with Vrabel saying he thought his team played a “clean game” after watching the film.
“I thought we played — to continue to build the identity of playing with great effort and trying to take care of the guy with the ball,” Vrabel said. “We have to tackle better, and that happens sometimes in the first live action. A lot of good stuff to teach off of there.
“Did a lot of really good things,” Vrabel added. “Then we just have to continue to improve the things that we talked about with the missed tackles or getting into a rhythm with the passing game and kind of just continue to progress.”
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