Tom Curran of NBC Sports Boston was one of several reporters who were able to get a one-on-one interview with new Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel on Monday, and Curran was able to garner an interesting bit from Vrabel during the interview when it came to Executive Vice President of Player Personnel, Eliot Wolf.
Curran asked Vrabel during the interview how comfortable he was with the personnel department being headed by Wolf to find good players, and Vrabel didn’t express any doubt when it came to whether or not he believed Wolf will get the job done.
In fact, after already having spent time and clearly having had some conversations, Vrabel alluded to the fact there were some additional factors that may have limited Wolf both last offseason, and during 2024.
“Yeah, very,” said Vrabel about his confidence level of Wolf. “And I think that having talked to Eliot, I think that in getting to know him through the interview process and then some over the weekend, there were some things that maybe didn’t allow him to completely invest in personnel.”
“I’m not going to be able to watch every player. I’m not going to be able to watch as many players as they will. I’m excited about them being able to consolidate that, to get me the players, to get me in front of the players that we need to identify and evaluate and allow me to coach the football team and then come together with a shared vision about who can help us.”
“Then part of that is also developing them. I mentioned that. I believe in that, teaching them, developing them, and then inspiring them through a connection. Whatever they’ve done, whatever they did last year, that was last year and we’re going to give them an opportunity to prove their value this year to the football team.”
The part about the things that didn’t allow Wolf to “completely invest in personnel” was the tidbit that raised an eyebrow. Curran didn’t follow up on that point, and it ended up being something discussed Monday night on NBC Sports Boston as Curran, the Boston Herald’s Andrew Callahan, Phil Perry, and Trenni Casey each weighed in on the comment on air.
“I don’t know what that is. That is a very… That word invest is carrying a lot,” said Curran. “And does he mean invest as we would conventionally think? He wasn’t allowed to invest money? Well, explain the Calvin Ridley pursuit. Explain the pursuit or the resigning to big money contracts, a number of what we would call basically middling free agents. Is that investing that he wasn’t able to do there? Were they not able to invest time? How do you guys interpret it?”
Callahan believes it had more to do with time, with both Callahan and Doug Kyed having spoken to a lot of people behind the scenes leading up to the terrific piece they both wrote last week about the internal dysfunction going on.
“To me, throwing a dart here, that hit my ear as ‘time,'” said Callahan. “We know that Eliot Wolf spent a great deal of time building the coaching staff last offseason, and there were some fires to put not only within that coaching staff, but between the front office and the coaching staff.”
“This is someone I know last month when the league has its meetings among all the owners and GMs in December, he didn’t go. They sent Matt Groh to that. That, to me, said a small thing that also could have highlighted a larger picture of just like, there’s more going on here on his plate than it’s just evaluating players.”
“I think what Mike said is, ‘Hey, look, I know you’re a good scout. Everyone around the league, even if you’re a little bit lower than consensus in Elliott Wolf admits you’re a good scout. If you just get back to doing that, this might actually work out. For now, I don’t have to commit one way or another. We only had our first date.'”
Perry believes that part of what Vrabel may also have been alluding to is that the former linebacker feels Wolf knows what he’s doing, and that Wolf may have also decided to be a little more collaborative than maybe he should have last offseason, possibly to a fault.
“I think the word invest is an interesting one to use in this regard,” said Perry. “My guess is the explanation for why some of the players worked or didn’t work, more likely, in terms of the guys that they signed or drafted this past offseason, is that the front office really leaned on the coaching staff. They leaned on the coaching staff in order to help them make decisions that got made that ended up not working out for the most part, quite frankly. ”
“I wonder if this is Mike Vrabel’s way of explaining to us, Eliot knows what he’s doing. He’s really good at his job. He was trying to be collaborative last year. He looked at the coaching staff. He was trying to take input from them and give them what they needed. It ended up not working out.”
Casey added that the word may have more to do with the lack of an investment by the coaching staff to develop the guys who were brought in for them to coach up.
“That’s how I am trying to read into this comment,” said Casey. “My mind immediately went to talk to what, Henry McKenna of Fox Sports? What he said is, Oh, ‘I thought they were going to develop them, but they didn’t invest in the players that he brought for them.’ That’s how I interpret it.”
According to a report by Albert Breer, Ryan Cowden, who worked with Vrabel in Tennessee, has accepted the job with the Patriots personnel department, with Cowden reportedly working under Wolf in the current structure.
The question then likely becomes how these guys will all work together, which will obviously be a key dynamic in all of this.
However, for now, the priority will be for Vrabel to first find out what the needs are heading into the offseason, with this roster clearly requiring a significant overhaul heading into 2025.
How things go over these next three months will certainly be critical as Vrabel, Wolf, and Cowden set the foundation for a team that ended up with a lot of holes following a tough 2024 season.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
