TRANSCRIPT: Mike Vrabel Interview on WEEI 12/8
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Here’s what New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel had to say during his weekly interview on WEEI on Monday, December 8, 2025.
GH: Do you get to watch any football this weekend?
“Yeah, a little bit.”
GH: Yeah? What did you end up watching?
“Watched the Bills.”
GH: Bills, Bengals. You’re in the heart of it here as the season gets to the Third, third, or however you want to describe it.
“Third quarter?”
GH: Third quarter, I guess. We could say third, third. You look ahead to this game, and obviously, you want to get guys off the bye week and focused on this. How do you do that as a head coach?
“Well, I think we’re going to meet this morning, and we’re going to go over the stuff that we feel like we’ve done well up until this point. Talk about the things that we can improve, that we have to improve, but not lose sight of the things that we’ve done well. Try to be positive, but truthful, I think, is something that we’re going to focus on, and then practice and go against each other and get moving and get back to the fundamentals and get back to the things that we know are important, especially this time of year.”
GH: What are some things from your perspective that you can improve on this football team?
“Well, you try to look at it positionally, and I think that whether it’s the offensive line and being able to get into the line of scrimmage or just focus on pad level, talking about pass-rush games and then continuing to do what we’ve done well, stay inside-out. Our combinations have improved. Wide receivers, talk about just this time of year being strong at the top of the route, being able to play through to contact and the grabby and the contested catches with the weather and all those things. So there’s a litany of things at each position that we’ll try to go over and review. I think continue to try to stay complementary and get these guys to keep feeding off each other is something that’s important. And then just the little things in each phases, short yardage, red zone. Those are the things that I think we’ll continue to focus on. Our kickoff return on special teams.”
GH: You’re very intentional in what you say everywhere. So it was of interest to me that you used the word champion twice this past week, once with the guys after the game and once talking to the media on Tuesday. And some would say, I’m reluctant to say that. What’s the intention there?
“Well, that’s what we’re playing for. We’re playing for a championship this week. Each week, you have a new opportunity, a new message. This is a Championship week for us, an opportunity to win the AFC East, something that this team hasn’t done in five years, or Buffalo has done it five years in a row. To do that, you have to go out and play a certain way, and you have to do things and continue to improve. We didn’t start to say, ‘Oh, we’re going to win the Super Bowl in November,’ or then in November. It’s not that. It’s just conversations that I have with the team to try to focus on things that we need to try to do and want to do, and understand that this is a great opportunity for us this week here at home. And since the last time we’ve played, they’ve changed, we’ve changed. Hopefully, it’s going to be a fantastic game. That team is not going away. They have a quarterback who is an MVP quarterback that under any circumstances is going to be ready to either win the football game with whatever running or throwing that he has to do. And then whenever they need a play, he seems to make it.”
JW: Mike, you guys, obviously, getting the bye is great for guys to get some time off. But what’s the thing that you’ll be paying close attention to today, especially at practice, when guys get back?
“Whether they’re… the energy level or, again, we haven’t done anything in a week, so I’m not going to pay attention to anything too closely. I’m going to make sure that we’re moving the same way that I’m used to us moving in and out of drills and not standing around, and that we’re going and moving, that we focus on the details and practice, that we take care of each other, that we stay up, that we practice fast. I’ve said this numerous times, that good teams know how to practice without pads on, less than full speed, or full speed without pads, all these different tempos and things. So we’ll have to continue to work on that.”
CC: But your track record coming off of a bye week as a head coach is excellent. 6-0. Do you have a secret sauce that you use for guys coming off a bye to make sure that they’re not coming off sluggish?
“If I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you, Courtney.”
Courtney: That is true.
CC: I know. And you might have jinxed it.
Courtney: No, come on. Greg’s the jinkx.
“Jinkx. It’s like the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny.”
Courtney: Which are both real.
CC: With the guy that said the media was the one that got your players hurt after that game in Cincinnati.
“Did you think I was serious? Did you really think I was serious? You guys don’t know me that well. My God.”
Courtney: But how do you make sure that they are motivated coming off?
“Motivated. I’ve been through this. Do we think that professional athletes need to be motivated?”
Courtney: The new athletes, some people wonder.
“I think they need to be inspired.”
Courtney: Okay.
“And you try to inspire them by giving them confidence and the trust in doing their job when they go out there, that they know what to do, they trust the guy next to them, that they’re prepared, and that they feel like this is going to give them a chance to win. The motivation, I used to say that, and then I ran into some guy, somebody talked somewhere, And he talked about ‘They’re motivated, whether they’re motivated by winning, money, dating the cheerleader in high school, being the starting quarterback. There’s some motivating factor. We have to be able to inspire them to do their job better.'”
CC: Mike, what did that Sunday night game in Buffalo do, if anything, to your expectations of this team? Because I feel like for everybody outside of this building, that was a moment that said, ‘Wow, this team is different than the ones we’ve seen recently.’
“Well, I think, I don’t know if it did anything for our expectations. I think it gave us some confidence to be able to go and play on that stage and play on the road and beat an undefeated team at the time, which we all know is a good football team, which is a fundamentally sound football team, one that you really every time you beat them, you’re going to earn it. They’re not going to usually hand it to you. That’s a long time ago, but I don’t know if it changed the expectation. In my mind, I think it just gave us some confidence moving forward.”
GH: Devin McCourty was talking this week about being here for the Monday night game and what an advantage he feels like the crowd is here. He was saying it’s a little bit different now than dynasty time because the fans then would kind of expect it, but they’re into it. They are an advantage for the team. You feel the same way?
“Absolutely. And I’ve said this. I think that we have to continue to give them things to cheer about, and be excited about, and be into. And I think a lot of that is effort plays. I think a lot of that is their physicality. It’s the X plays, it’s negative plays on defense, or obviously, turnovers or returns, all these things that, it leads to excitement, to their excitement and their enjoyment.”
JW: Mike, I don’t know how many guys on the team have been around success and winning, but you’ve been there before as a guy who was able to win your first year and then win a few more championships as a player. What type of advice would you give to some of these guys that might not have experienced the success that you’re having now, for them to keep their eye on the prize and maybe not get caught up with all the hoopla of what we’re saying about the expectation of this team?
“Just focus on what we’ve been doing. That’s what we said, when you take a nap, no naps. You take a nap, and you lose, or the quarterback fumbles the ball, or they score on defense. You just can’t take any breaks in this league. It’s too competitive. I think we’ve done a good job of understanding that whatever we did last week isn’t going to be good for this week. We have to start back over and continue to build throughout the week, and have a plan. How ever the game unfolds, being ready to play it in that manner. Whether it’s we need a situation at the end of the half, we need a situation at the end of the game, or we get out early, how ever the game plays out, we have to be ready for it.”
Courtney: After last week, when we talked to you about Will Campbell, there were a lot of people who took what you said, your response about not rushing him back, and thought that maybe his injury was worse than what we first expected. Is there any way that you can steer people in the right direction on where that injury stands? Is he recovering in the right way?
“I don’t know what I said, and I don’t know how they took it. I apologize, Courtney.”
Courtney: But it’s not way worse than we thought it was going to be? Not season ending?
“I would hope not.”
Courtney: He’s recovering well?
“So far, so good. I haven’t seen him yet today. I mean, guys, I’m pretty entertaining here for you, but I don’t talk much about injuries.
Courtney: That’s fair.
“Certainly not going to start here with you guys.”
GH: No, we wouldn’t want that.
Courntey: We would love that, really.
Chris Curtis: Reverse psychology. I like it.
GH: Help yourself to all of my stuff here if you want.
JW: When you talked about Josh Allen and watching a little bit of that game last night. When you look at the Buffalo Bills and the football team and a guy like that, what’s the key as a defense that you got to make? I guess it’s, excuse me, pick your poison. You don’t want a guy to use his legs, but then again, you don’t want him to have the ability to just have all day in the pocket and pick you apart. What’s the-
GH: Wiggy has some advice. He’s already shared it on the show.
“Go ahead. I would love to hear it.”
GH: Coach Wiggens. You missed when Wiggy was coaching Rockton High School for a season.
“Boxes. Yeah, how’d they do?”
GH: He got let go after one year.
JW: I wasn’t a Union guy. That was it.
Chris Curtis: Mutually agreed to part ways.
JW: I had a freshman quarterback. We were young. My second year is when we were going to turn things around. But I wasn’t a Union guy. They were like, ‘No, you got to beat it.’
Chris Curtis: His acceptance speech went three hours.
JW: The reason why I say that is I’m watching that game last night, Cincinnati, yesterday, and it’s 3rd-and-15. I just go from a defensive standpoint, and listen, I’m no defensive coordinator, but I would rather put pressure on a guy who’s that good of a runner and say, ‘We’re going to get the ball out of your hands and let you beat us throwing it versus you running for 18 yards.’
“I thought they pressured him a little bit.”
GH: There was a little bit of pressure, Wiggy.
“Then he took off. 88 and out the gate. You got to stop to run. This is a big physical offensive line that does a great job running the ball. [James] Cook has got great vision, got great burst. They have a very good scheme. Then they mix up personnel, a bunch of different personnel. And then obviously, the balance of Josh Allen and 40-yard touchdowns by quarterbacks are tough to defend. And that’ll certainly be a huge challenge for us. Every critical play, the ball is in his hand.”
GH: I know you said you watch a little bit of football. Did you get to see that, Isiah Likely TD get overturned? Is that weird to you? Did you see that play at all?
“I did. I think just on first glance, it looked like the ball was out before the third step.”
GH: Okay. Wiggy was-
JW: Yeah, I didn’t know the third step also, they meant that as well in the field of play versus in the end zone. Because I always thought once you showed possession, you got two feet down. I’m like, ‘all right.’
“That’s when guys, they relax, and they take a deep breath, and they take a nap. On that third step is, and you’ve seen that before, there was a play that Trey McBride had maybe two years ago with the Steelers as well, that he caught it and it was like one, two, and somebody knocked it out of his hand. Or you see guys finishing. And just like we’ve shown our DBs, just go and finish in the end zone, and you never know if they’ve completed the process of the catch or not. And they take a deep breath, and then all of a sudden it’s two steps, and then the ball comes out.”
GH: I’m getting a signal we got to let you go.
Courtney: No.
“Okay, go ahead. One more.”
Courtney Well, that was a non-football. I have to know if Ann-Michael Maye, if you’ve tried any of her ‘bakemass.’
“I had the, there was an Apple Crisp bar.”
Courtney: Good?
“Yeah, delicious.”
Courtney: Okay, because they look good on social media. I wanted to know if they were good in real life.
“Yeah, she brings them in for the O-linemen.”
GH: Careful with that because the sportcoat won’t fit anymore.
“How was the 5K? I heard that …”
GH: We walked. Courtney and I walked.
“Good.”
GH: She’s pregnant.
“Congrats”
GH: But it was great. We had 2,000 people in the seaport. It was awesome. It was great.
“Did you guys run all over the place?”
GH: Yeah, we went, ran all the way down past, like Saver, OP, all the way down, down around, back out by the docks and everything. It was awesome.
“Raise some good money?”
GH: Great money. All right, good luck. This is a good one. Go get them.
“Thank you, I appreciate you guys.”
(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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