TRANSCRIPT: Mike Vrabel’s Weekly Interview on WEEI 9/22
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Here’s what New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel had to say during his appearing on WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show on Monday:
Frustrating to watch. It must have been even more frustrating to coach that one yesterday.
“Well, it’s never frustrating to coach it. It’s frustrating to watch it. I mean, you’re in the moment, and you’re trying to keep everybody together. You’re trying to get some stops. You’re trying to focus on the situation. It’s never frustrating to coach it. It’s frustrating to watch it.”
I’m sure happy with, at least from a perspective of those guys not giving up, not getting frustrated by the turnover?
“No. I mean, we can polish the turd however we want to. And just understand that you got a 5% chance to win a game where you have that many turnovers. The average margin of victory in those instances is probably 18 points. And to think that we still had a chance. So there’s a lot of good stuff in there. There’s stuff that’s very detrimental, obviously. We have to correct it, and we have to be able to move on. But we have to be able to coach it and acknowledge it and then fix it.”
First five-turnover game for the New England Patriots since 2008, and I think you were playing in that game. I don’t know if you remember it. That’s a long time ago.
“I don’t. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have one of them, which was probably a good thing.”
Yeah, that is a good thing. Yes, absolutely a good thing.
Mike, take us through the operation because we’ve been sitting here and we’ve been discussing the Pop Douglas play. It looks like that they bring a blitz, and Drake Maye had to get the ball out hot. It looks like Pop could be running a little flat route. Is there something where he should have went a little bit deeper or because of the blitz, it caught him in that position? What happened on that fourth-and-2 play?
“Well, I think we just have to make a great decision. In those vice tackle situations, we’ve talked all along about knifeing, about knowing where the sticks are. We had a couple of examples, especially last week. We had some examples yesterday. You probably just have to be able to knife and get what you need, and know where you’re at and be able to get to the sticks. Again, you just can’t… Those are tough to try to circle those guys up in that situation.”
I don’t mean… But in that situation, did he not… Excuse me, not realize where he might have been on the field. Shouldn’t he be thinking about that pre-snap? Okay, here’s where the first outmarcher is. This is where I need to get to.
“I think we’re close. We probably just need to get another revolution. And then if we’re not, if we stop, we have to be able to knife. We have to be able to get the yardage that we need. We really want to be able to get to the sticks. If we’re not, we’re not matched, be able to sit down, what you did, and then being able to knife through the defender or get a half a yard.”
I know after the game yesterday, when you were asked about Ramondre Stevenson, you said that you guys need to fix it when it comes to ball security. But this has been an issue for him under Bill, under Jerod, now under you. How do you fix something like that?
“Well, it starts with everybody else. It starts with him, but it also starts with protecting the guy with the ball. We’ll have to do a better job of that. If you look at the second guy coming in or somebody else is making a play or not finishing, certainly it’s easy to look at the guy with the ball, and that has to be where it starts, our technique.”
“But it’s also, it’s got to be put on everybody else to make sure that they’re protecting the guy with the ball, and that the guys aren’t coming off of plays late diving in there or trying to avoid those… Just as you can see, there’s times where they can make the guy miss when you can see him, and when it’s the guy that you don’t see, and we have protect him from the guy that he can’t see him and be able to block. So it goes on all of us. It goes on everybody out there, and we’ll keep repping it. And just unfortunate.”
Three pass plays at the end of the half from the two-yard line with three timeouts. Why?
“Well, there were some called alerts, right? And I think just getting into a play that gives us the best chance. They loaded us up pretty good. And it was … And Drake canned it to one or had an alert for a run if we had a favorable look. And I didn’t hate the calls. Again, certainly the execution has to be better.”
“Knowing what we’re going to get down there from them, having a good idea, just as the same way as they came back and blitzed us on the other fumble. You want to make sure that you have bodies in there, that you have pieces in there, and that if they one-up you and they go with a defense that brings blitz zero, that you have options. And again, we didn’t execute down there. So we’ll have to stay sound and try to predict what they’re going to do and give everybody options just like we did last week. We got the look that we wanted. We were able to plow it in there. And this week, we weren’t able to score.”
I know you said on this show last week or the week before, penalty is not a key indicator when it comes to winning or losing, but you sounded frustrated, halftime-wise interview about the penalties on this.
“Well, it’s the ones that are third down, and not all penalties are created equal. And so certainly the ones that are critical, that extend drives or give them the ball, the technical errors. I think that you can be going hard and playing hard and have a mistake and jump off sides. Then the technique that doesn’t get fixed is frustrating. The technique that we choose and the things that they’re looking for, I think that those are the things, again, the ones that extend drives on third down. We had a couple of those defensively. Then there were times where, I’d look at Carlton [Davis], I thought he played with good technique, good defense, and was looking and playing the football, and she chose to throw a penalty, and maybe we could agree or disagree, but we move on.”
How is that possible with the ball landing five yards out of bounds?
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask them, too. I’m with you. When I said four, I wrote four down, and you said five. I wrote four yards down. So again, I’ve heard that they use that big white stripe, that if it lands outside of that, that maybe it was uncatchable, but they didn’t see it that way.”
When was the last time we’ve seen a pass interference where they actually said it was uncatchable? I feel like.
Just the Chiefs game.
Yeah, don’t do it. But Mike, the interception, turnover is always a killer, right? And especially when they lead to points or they take away points. The Drake Maye interception at the end of the half. should that have been a back pylon on throw?
“It shouldn’t have been a flat one. Obviously, just having an idea of where that guy is and be able to put some air on it. I think that those are things we have to be able to see and, again, get the spacing that we need and be able to keep it out of harm’s way.”
To end a half like that for Drake and come back out and not spiral, I think a lot of fans find that impressive from him from a young quarterback. Do you see that the mental game is there for Drake, that if he has a bad pass, if he has an interception, that you don’t see him spiral out there? He continues to fight?
“And again, those are good qualities. We just can’t keep testing it over and over and over again. But I do appreciate the resiliency of him and this football team and our ability to continue to fight and continue to stay in it and compete. It just has to be cleaner so that we’re not always in that situation.”
Can you coach pocket presence, or is that something that you either have or you don’t?
“I just think that you can do some drills and make sure that we’re good with the football, and you have to be able to create a pocket to be able to work through and be able to transfer up into it and do it with ball security. And then once you get going, the journey is probably over, and we have to either get down and be okay to take a loss or be able to get rid of the football in times where it’s loose.”
“And again, there’s opportunities for guys to finish. I don’t know how long the guy is going to have the football. That’s why we say we have to finish longer than the guy with the ball. And there’s a lot of examples of that, and thinking that the play is over, and sometimes the play isn’t over. So it’s easy to say, ‘Well, you got to have better ball security.’ And it’s going to be really easy for me to say, ‘We have to finish longer than the guy with the ball because didn’t on numerous occasions.'”
Giant nuts on you going for it on fourth down early in that game.
“Just trying to figure out ways to help us. We’ve done pretty well in short yardage lately. First week wasn’t too good. Last two weeks have been good. So feel good about some of these plays.”
As a head coach, when you make that decision, is that to show confidence in your guys? Is that a part of the decision making for you?
“I just think it’s that we can get these and that we have to have an attitude that we’re going to be decisive and aggressive. We put a drive together, and then unfortunately, it ends the way that it ended. I think it’s a balance of where you’re at in the game and trying to jumpstart it and let these guys take ownership of it.”
Mike, I saw this stat when I was watching the game. I don’t know how accurate it was, but they said that you guys are the fourth youngest team in the NFL. Does that attribute to maybe some of the close games that you have when you come out on the wrong end of that? Just guys maybe not having enough experience of situational football under their belt yet?
“I mean, I think, I mean, we better be used to it. The whole league is this is how it’s going to be every week. So take your heart pills and be good in situational football.”
Mike, you just got here for all this, but the last 19 games in this building, the Patriots have won three.
“Yeah, I know. We have to start winning some games here. We have to give our fans a reason to get behind us. It’s got to be an advantage. I’m not going to start figuring out why. I have quick answers from yesterday, but we have to… That’s the formula. You have to win games at home, and you have to steal a couple on the road. And we did last week in a division game, and there’ll be a good week to get back here and get a win at home.”
I know it’s turnover’s obviously kill you, but is there anything positive to take away when you have five turnovers and you still have a chance to win the football game?
“Yeah, I think that you’re disappointed, you’re not discouraged, that you have to stay hopeful and understand that a lot of good stuff out there. There’s a lot of good third down conversions. There’s a lot of good runs, a lot of good defense. When we settled down, a lot of three-and-outs, three, three and outs. They gained, I don’t know, 80 yards after the first two series. They really had three drives. I thought we tackled better. There were still some missed tackles, but we got off the field on third down for most of the game. I felt like the defense just said, ‘Wherever the ball is, we’re going to go play defense. We don’t care.’ And they did that, and I give them credit. Not very good in the red zone, obviously, on either side of the ball. So that’ll again be a huge emphasis this week.”
From listening to you this morning, yesterday, weeks past that you’ve been on, it’s very clear where you stand on penalties. Obviously, there are different types of penalties that a team faces, but undisciplined has been a word that’s come up when it comes to this team. Do you feel like you have an undisciplined team? And if you do, how do you, as a head coach, fix it?
“I don’t know necessarily … define undisciplined. I mean, are we the second guy? Are we throwing punches? I don’t think we’re the second guy in. I don’t think we’re… Again, we always are trying to improve our discipline. We worked on offensively the line of scrimmage, some of the movement that the defense was giving us last week. We worked on that. I thought that was better. Undisciplined and grabbing a tight end. Using poor technique, I don’t know if that’s undisciplined. [It’s] not being very good.”
Mike, one of the things that coming into this season I looked at is your running back room, and I think you have three really good players there. It’s all about confidence. We’ve seen some fumbles from Gibson and Stevenson and some pass protection issues from Henderson. What’s your confidence level in that group?
“Well, we’ve also seen a lot of really big plays, too. Got to take care of the football. When we have a guy to protect, we have to be able to go and block him. But we’ve also seen a lot of big plays from that room, too. So it goes hand in hand. When you lose, it sucks, and we don’t realize that they made some big plays. When you win, we’ll tell everybody about the big play. So my job is to focus on both of those, and actually the good, the bad, and the stuff that gets you beat. We know that the turnovers are going to get you beat, and missed blocks got to get fixed, and then remind them of all the good stuff, and breaking tackles, and catching the ball, and getting X plays, and returning the kickoffs for 100 yards, and all those other stuff.”
(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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