TRANSCRIPT: Mike Vrabel’s Interview on WEEI 9/8
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Here’s what New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel had to say during his weekly sit down interview with WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show on Monday:
Good morning, Coach. Good morning. Not the way you drew it up, as they say, yesterday?
“No, but I mean, obviously, we’re going to have to get some things fixed, and we’ll have to start to look at just being able to take advantage of the opportunities when they’re there. We got some keys, and I don’t know that we all really executed them on all three levels. There’s some good, there’s some bad, and there’s always the stuff that gets you beat.”
Top to bottom. So coaching, all the way down…
“That’s always what it’s going to be. We just have to do a better job of understanding about winning the second half in some of these games that are close and just getting off to a better start. Defensively, we settled down. We had three, three and outs, and we only came away with three points. That is not very complementary football, and it’s disappointing. If you’re able to do that, we have to be able to put some more points on the board. Then obviously, the X plays that we gave them. Defense and some of the penalties and things that cost us on specialties. But we had a good kickoff return that gave us good field position that got us going on and things that we could build on throughout the game.”
Mike, you say coaching better. Take us into the mindset a little bit. It’s third and 20, and you seem like you’re a little bit aggressive there, which leads to a long play. I know [Carlton] Davis bites on the slant and goal. Why not play coverage in that situation?
“Well, just still trying to be aggressive and trying to force a mistake, and probably have to play off. Again, just catch, and tackle, and rally. But we feel like being aggressive right there is what allowed us to get into third and 20. Just situationally being able to get the guys off, everybody looking at the football, and then we know what it’s going to be, and it’s going to be have to be a catch tackle, but just trying to make a play and trying to be aggressive in that situation.”
When it comes to Drake Maye, last season, he had an issue with trying to force plays to make something happen. Did you see any issues with that yesterday? Did that lead to any of the times where he threw the ball away or maybe put them in a tough position, the interception, of course?
“Yeah, I thought he was bumped a little bit. We’ve got to get into these routes and get spacing. Then obviously, if the quarterback gets hit, bad things happen, right? Turnovers happen or they get hurt eventually. That’s kind of what I’ve always said when the quarterback gets hit. I thought he had some really good decisions. I thought he was accurate at times, and then I thought there were some misses. That’s how it goes. I thought we protected, for the most part, fairly well. It was never perfect, never will be, but I thought there were some clean pockets and against a few really good pass rushers.”
But you threw the ball 46 times. Is that ideal?
“No, no, no, no, no. I think that the way that the game went and where we had to be in the, down two possessions, we have to be much more balanced. We have to run the football better, more consistently, so that some of these play pass opportunities show up. I thought you saw some good examples of that, whether that was some movement plays by Drake down in the red zone, that just flipped the hoop, and he’s able to gain 10 yards, and there’s some of those examples. But just being able to run it more consistently will help us with some of those plays.”
What did you think of Will Campbell, his first regular season game?
“I thought it was steady. I thought there were some good plays. I don’t think there were any… The couple of movement times in a run game, him and Jared [Wilson] might have got disjointed. But I thought that they played okay on the left side. I think it was a good place to start for two rookies playing their first game on the left side of the line. I didn’t think it was…”
Penalty costly when you have that fourth-and … [penalty]
“Yeah, I mean, again, taking that out. I’m talking about the course of the game. Yeah, the mistake in critical situational football. Yes. But I’m just looking at the overall body of work that it didn’t look like they were overwhelmed with a 21 and a 22-year-old on the left side of the line.
Penalties, are you happy with…I mean, you’re never happy with any…
“No. We had a couple on special teams. We had defensively, there were a few. Yeah, it was less than ideal, I think, with penalties. We had a couple. The ones on the kickoff return and the punt return are real costly. They chew up so much yardage and take you back. Can’t start drives on the 12-yard line and expect to go 90 yards every single time.”
Drake’s performance yesterday was not up to the standard, I think, that fans and media had expected from him. It feels, from my perspective, that the organization has gone out of its way to make Drake comfortable, as opposed to try and get the most out of him. Whether you take four series in the preseason, you trade the guy that was backing him up last year. Do you think Drake is being pushed enough to be great? And do you think that that… Does the culture of this organization and the losing they’ve been a part of the last several years, does that impact a young guy like Drake Maye, trying to take over?
“That was a long question… Can you shorten it down for me? Because I promise you, I’m trying to get the best out of every player, but that was just a lot there for me to unpack.”
Are you concerned at all about how important it is for Drake Maye to win? Do you think it’s the most important thing for him?
“God, I hope so. Again, I hope winning is important for everybody, and I want the best from everybody. I want a competitive spirit. If I don’t see that, then we’ll have to make decisions and changes at every level. I don’t see that. I think that he wants to be, at times, perfect, and I need to get past that. We all have to get past that. You need to be precise and not perfect. If you make a mistake, it’s the reaction that you have to the mistake that everybody sees, and then they’re like, ‘Oh, wow, that was a mistake.’ We have to clean our reactions up. Our responses have to be much better. Then getting into the flow because you see really good timing and precision and accuracy. Then we see some other misses. But I don’t ever concern myself with that. I just want the better performance, more consistent, and continue to grow as a leader and make sure that there is a command to what we’re doing, that ‘This is the situation, this is the play.’ Those are the things that I’m focused on.
Mike, help me understand because I’m sitting here fourth and five. Inside five minutes, you guys decide to punt the football down by 10. When I’m thinking in that situation, you guys are clearly going to go for it.
“Obviously, we were going for it on fourth and five, and then it goes to fourth and 10. Now, I think those numbers changed drastically.”
Sorry, it was fourth and five. It never went to fourth to 10. Excuse me, but it was fourth and five, and you did punt. So it never went to fourth and 10.
“We false started, and it went to fourth and 10.”
Oh, did it? Okay, I’m sorry about that.
“We were on the ball going for it, and that was the penalty that he alluded to.”
Right after the strip sack.
Yeah, sorry about that.
“Again, you don’t want to be in those situations. There’s a percentage of the fourth and 10. There’s a percentage that you kick it, and you don’t want to kick it 21 yards, and you don’t want to give up an X play and all that other stuff. Again, I’ve learned that whatever decision that we go with, the steps along the way have to be perfect when you’re down two scores. Again, if we go for it, we still have to go and kick a field goal or score a touchdown and then get the ball back. I was trying to just pin him back, be aggressive, get the ball back, and give us a chance to do something. That clearly didn’t happen. There were some good plays. I thought we moved with some urgency to get down there. It was cool to see Andy [Borregales] make a kick and come back after he missed. A lot of good things, and we just have to… We got to embrace moving on and learning from this and doing it quickly. This league doesn’t rest for you. It doesn’t wait around.”
You called it a game of missed opportunities. Is that what you expect with young guys in general, and how do you make sure that they’re able to move on from a loss like that?
“That’s not what I expect. I want to be clear that I don’t think anybody expects that. We’ll see. I think just how we take the coaching and how we come in and the leadership that we have, I talked about that. We’ll start to see where that shakes out. But I’m confident that these guys will come back. Again, the young guys that we have to get, it was young guys, it was veterans, it’s going to be every one of us and not just the rookies or the second-year players. It’s everybody at all levels working together. I think you can show them the examples of when it did look good and then the examples of, ‘Hey, we’re a little disjointed here, or we’re not communicating, or we gave up too many X plays. These were the keys that we had talked about coming into the game.'”
On Saturday night, Bill Belichick addressed the story that scouts from the Patriots were not allowed onto the campus to scout the Tar Heels. He said that he’s not welcome here, so why would he allow Patriots employees onto his campus? Is Bill Belichick welcome here, and were you surprised that he didn’t allow the scouts onto campus to scout his players?
“Again, nothing surprises me. I would imagine that Bill, he came back for, well, to the best of my knowledge, Tom’s ceremony, so that I would… I guess he’s welcomed back based on the fact that he was there. I’ll just go by that. Since his departure as the head coach here, he’s been back, and I’ll leave it at that.”
Has he maybe been out shopping or something at Patriot Place and not allowed to walk…does his key card still work?
“Well, no. When you get fired, the key card does not work. I tried it. I went back to Tennessee. It doesn’t work.”
They call that a Mangini.
“No, the fingerprint doesn’t work. The key card doesn’t work. No, that’s not how it happens.”
Chance you get Christian Gonzales back?
“Again, we’ll see. He’s working extremely hard. I know that we’ll get him in here on a Monday today and evaluate him and see where he goes. Christian is working hard, and he wants to be back. I do know that.”
I got to always ask these questions every week. Temperament, Stef Diggs, not that involved Yesterday, he okay afterwards? Feel good about where he’s at?
“Yeah, I saw some energy from him. I saw some passion, and everybody just wants to win. I don’t think that he’s too caught up on production. I think that we want to win and make the plays that we’re supposed make. When the ball comes to you and finds you, we have to be able to do something with it. That’s how this thing goes.”
Mike, I would say one area where you guys really looked good was your ability to get after the quarterback. Talk a little bit about what that means, especially for your front seven, that when you can create pressure and make a quarterback uncomfortable, what that means for the team.
“Well, I think that the more times that you’re able to pressure the quarterback, just like we talked about with Drake or weren’t getting hit, the more that you can hit a quarterback, obviously, that can lead to turnovers. Hopefully, the quarterback has accounted for 65% of all the fumbles last year in the National Football League. That’s the number one target to try to get the ball away from, to be able to hit in the pocket or as he’s scrambling or whatever it may be. That was good to see. If we pressure him, we need to be able to tip some passes. We need some pass rush PBUs, and ball production is really what we’re looking for. I’m glad that we were able to hit him the times that we hit him and sack him, but we got to take the next step to get the ball out.”
Real game action for TreVeyon Henderson. How do you feel like he fared?
“Well, I think we got to give him some space. I think that there were a few times where maybe he should have gone, maybe one time on a screen he probably should have kept it outside instead of cutting it back inside. But I thought TreVeyon tried to play fast, and we got to open up some holes on the kickoff return, too. We got to use that as a weapon and try to be better there. We were much better in preseason than we were yesterday. We had the one good one, but not consistent enough. TreVeyon’s going to keep working, and he’ll be a big part of what we do.”
Maxx Crosby kind of hit Drake May, barely hit him out of bounds, then made the hands to the eyes crying a motion. Or motion, was that directed at you?
“I don’t know. Maxx and I…”
Were you ready to throw if you had to?
“No, I didn’t even notice that Maxx did that. No.”
We don’t care about that.
“No, I don’t.”
We don’t care about any of that.
You talk about the run game and wanting to get more out of it. What do you think took away from that? Because the score was relatively close. Do you feel like it was maybe you just got to stay after it more. Do you feel like you leaned on the pass a little bit?
“I think the better that we are able to move it and not just gain a yard or two, I mean, I think that you have to have a flow. You got to see some space. You got to give the runner some space, and you have to be able to move the line of scrimmage. They play a defense, and there’s a guy in every gap. If you don’t move them or you don’t create some space, there’s going to be a wall. We had a couple of glimpses, and they were moving, and when they move, we got to take advantage of that as well and try to come off and climb to the second level.”
“We’ll need a more consistent and just finetuned run plan that we believe in and quit worrying about some things like, ‘Hey, they’re in this front. We can’t run this. Well, maybe we can,’ and we’ll get back to the basics and try to move people off the ball and give our back some space to run, and then we’ll have to go get the support and receivers to be a part of that as well.
On to Miami. They didn’t look so great yesterday. What issues does that team create?
“Well, it’s always been a fast team. It’s always been a very fast-paced offense with their skilled players and what they do. The quarterback winning rhythm has been very accurate. I have to disrupt the timing of him. We’ll have to go on the road. This will be our first regular season game on the road, going down there in a division opponent. I would expect a very challenging and difficult game and one that we’ll have to find a way to win in the fourth quarter.”
Do you agree with Wiggy, must win?
“No, I don’t know. Again, I like to think that they’re all a must-win.”
Every one’s a must-win.
“If you look at it like that, that we only get so many opportunities, and we only get so many opportunities to win and continue to improve. It is a must-improve week. I think that when you do that, then that will lead to victories.”
You seem calm and collected after a loss. You’re not a throw things around the office guy?
“It would be really … My demeanor and what I do, I think, is it would be a reflection of everybody else in here around the building. I’m pretty sure everybody feels bad. It’s not going to do any good for me to start throwing everything around. I’m sure everybody else…. They don’t need me to feel worse. I think that everybody wants to win. They put a lot into it. We want to win for the players. We want to win for our fans that have supported us. That’s our job, and that’s what we’re going to continue to try to do.”
Good crowd yesterday.
“I was really … and again, I want to be able to thank them when they’re loud on third down and we get a stop and we win the football game and we make it hard on the other team, but we weren’t able to win. But yes, it was great to see even in the rain, and everybody out there. Very appreciative of that. I appreciate you mentioning that.”
Well, like you said, you got some young guys in the must-win. The importance of, obviously, the conference games and now a divisional game, getting some of these young guys. Getting some these young guys to understand that some of these guys come from college and they don’t know the magnitude. What’s some of your, I guess, tips or what you’d be telling some of those young guys about the importance of the divisional games?
“Well, I think that that’s where you can steal – When you steal some divisional games on the road, you really have a chance to make up some ground because that’s the fastest way into the playoff is by winning your division. Maybe they don’t quite understand that, like you said. Just showing them the percentage, meaning I’ll look up the percentages of the road wins in the side of the division and how that leads to success later on down the year. But really, I think we’re going to focus on making our corrections here today. Then I think when we come in on Wednesday, really have a concrete plan on letting these guys understand the vision and what the road games mean and the road environment and all these different things that we have to talk about.”
Do you think the second half was in any way a reflection of a lighter camp? A big storyline post-game was the team had not as many players playing? Preseason, not as much hitting as last year, and then the second half fall off. Does that have any relation?
“No, I don’t think so. I mean, we started driving, we threw an interception, and they scored. I don’t really think it did. I thought we’ve had last two weeks. I mean, we’ve practiced over 30 times. We had three joint practices, an inter-squad scrimmage. That’s the history of the football team. We just didn’t do enough in the second half, and I don’t think that that did. It’s certainly anyone’s opinion. I don’t, but I’m telling you how it went. We got a couple of first downs, and I thought it was great that we got a couple of first downs. We started on a twelve-yard line. We had a penalty on kickoff return. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but we started driving the football, threw a pick, and they scored.”
“That’s really, to me, how the second half started. Then we traded back and forth, and then we got into the action late and kicked the field goal. But that was the disappointing part, just the emphasis that we made on the second half for the last two weeks since we were starting on the Raiders. It’s just how many of these games were going to be one-score games and how many come down to the second half, and the team that was going to be able to come out and do it. That’s kind of how the game went. We just weren’t the team that was able to win the second half.”
Boutte had a good game. I just wanted to ask because we were all holding our breath when he went out briefly. What did he bang up in the very beginning of the game? Were you impressed with the way in which he came back?
“He’s had a great camp and he’s done a great job. I’m not going to get into injuries or anything that they were looking at, but he was evaluated, and then he was able to go back into the game. He did a nice job. He’s put a lot into it. It’s good to see him get the reward for working hard.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This transcript was done based on the available footage and is subject to typographical errors. If you spot anything, please let me know in the comments below.)
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