New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel says there are no consolation prizes for his team.
After a 20-year dynasty that included 6 Super Bowl Championships and 9 conference championships, the Pats wandered the desert for five years, only appearing in the Wild Card round one time. In Vrabel’s first season, the Pats went 14-3, won the AFC East, and finished second place in the conference.
Vrabel, who won three Super Bowls with the team in the 2000s, said Jan. 7 he expects his players to do more than just show up Sunday against the Los Angeles Chargers.
The Pats will host their first playoff game since 2019, when they lost to the Tennessee Titans. Vrabel was the coach of the Titans at the time and led them to an AFC Championship appearance. Quarterback Tom Brady left for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2020 season, and the Patriots wandered the NFL desert for five years. They went 7-9 in 2020.
They made their only playoff appearance in that span in 2021, going 10-7 before losing to the Buffalo Bills 47-17. They went 8-9 in 2022, then 4-13 in both 2023 and 2024. They went through two head coaches, firing legendary head coach Bill Belichick after the 2023 season, then former Pats player Jerod Mayo after just one season in 2024.
Vrabel brought immediate success to the team. The Pats went 14-3 and won the AFC East on the back of a dramatic victory over the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo in October. If not for a Week 1 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, New England would hold the top spot in the conference; that spot belongs to the Denver Broncos thanks to a mutual-opponent tiebreaker.
The key to that lightning-fast turnaround was re-establishing the team’s famous “Patriot Way” culture, but Vrabel was clear that culture doesn’t win football games.
“We’ve said this numerous times, you can’t just play hard and hope to win, run like this with the football and hope that you’re going to be able to break tackles or gain a bunch of yards,” he said. “So you need production, you need execution. I think that it helps. ... I think that the identity is important, but execution and guys making plays and us all sticking together is going to mean the most.”
To perform well in the postseason, the team would need to prepare well.
“We need to embrace the preparation, and I want them to continue to enjoy the execution and everything that goes on with us. I’m excited. I’m excited for these guys to prepare. I’m excited to coach them. So I hope that we’re locked in every week, and I imagine we'll get everything we can out of them,” he said.
A return to January football at Gillette Stadium is a major milestone, and Vrabel wants the fans to maximize home-field advantage.
“It’s just got to be a tough place to play in January,” he said. “When we’re able to get there in January like we are, we have to create an environment that makes it difficult to play. ... We were talking about what we would have to do to come in and win, and we need to create a hard environment. We need to play well, and let our crowd feed off of us, and let us feed off of them.”
The Patriots will take on the Los Angeles Chargers in Foxboro on Jan. 11. Vrabel praised their opponents for building a culture of their own.
“[They’re a] big physical football team. They don’t really beat themselves. They’re statistically excellent in every category across the front defensively. They stop the run well ... they’re good on third down, they’re good on short yardage, excellent in the red zone. ... Those are the things that I can appreciate with a defense or for a team, and you this is certainly a team that’s going to play that way,” he said.
