TRANSCRIPT: Mike Vrabel's Press Conference 8/24

Here’s what New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel had to say during his press conference on Monday, August 24, 2026.

On if he anticipates having Christian Gonzalez back at practice today or tomorrow:

“Yeah, I think we’re hopeful that he’ll be able to do some stuff. He was working before the game and trying to work through the return to play. So we’ll see how he feels this morning.”

On if they’ll bring in a new punter with Bryce getting injured on Saturday:

“Yeah, I think we will. So we’ll probably sign somebody here shortly.”

On how serious [the injury is] with Bryce:

“Serious enough that we’ll probably have to sign a new punter.”

On if it happened during the game:

“It happened in the game, yes. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t make him go out and kick while he was injured, if that’s what you’re asking. But yeah, no, it was something that occurred during the game, which is why the quarterback had to punt.”

On the fact that he’s talked from the beginning about having a sense of urgency with this team when it comes to what you were talking about the other day about depth and things like that, and how does he squeeze the talent that you have with the sense of urgency to get to where you need to get, and how deep do they need to be:

“Well, I mean, depth has to be built. You know what I mean? That’s something that has to be built through experience and making sure that the guys are in place to be the first backup in. Those are critical. Those are almost starters. We know how many people are going to have to play for you throughout the season, and there can’t be a drop-off. And so, that’s why we’re building it. And that’s what you have preseason for. It’s what you have training camp for. That’s what you have practices and joint practices, is to be able to identify those players that you think are in a position to provide that. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”

On if there were players that stepped up on Saturday:

“I think in the second half, I think there certainly were. I think, some guys that the coaches pointed out, I think Kindle [Vildor] obviously, some very competitive snaps. [Dametrious] Crownover, I thought, played well and tried to finish and tried to use his length in pass protection. I thought Lenny T [Leonard Taylor] played well and factored and showed up. I think offensively, even just down the line, I thought Chiz [Efton Chism] did a great job of, when the ball found him, making the plays, but also his ability to go and block force and finish. And, Kyle Dixon hadn’t been out there for a while. And so, a guy that’s relatively new to the receiver position, that was really cool to see him show up in some big moments. We’re throwing the ball to Kyle Dixon. He was a baseball player not too long ago on fourth down and he’s making a play. And then he was trying to block, finding the right guys to block in a run game. So, those are all really, really interesting things.”

On Christian [Gonzalez] what the protocol will be before practice today to determine if he’s ready to play or not:

“Well, we’ll meet here with Jim and myself and see where things are at and see how he feels and see how he feels warming up.”

On if he’s worked through whether he wants the starters to play a little bit on Thursday night:

“We have 2 days. it’s a short week, so we have 2 days. And again, I have to see where we’re at here coming out of the red zone today and and where we’re at tomorrow. But no, I haven’t made a determining factor or decision.”

On his embrace of sports science and load management, because people might look at him as a former linebacker from Northeast Ohio and not think of a guy wanting to give Morgan [Moses] or Reggie [Gilliam] a day off, and if that comes from conversations with doctors, or if maybe when he was a player he thought, ‘Hey, if we dialed it back a little, guys might be better prepared?’ Or how he came to that:

“No, I thought 10 straight 2-a-days was a good way to prepare the football team. I just think as the data becomes more available and, I think you have to be careful to go overboard. I mean, you want to track certain numbers and high-speed numbers and yardage and all the other stuff and also have a pretty good gauge of, I think, the player and what they look like and how conditioned they are, and we try to set the schedule up accordingly. Some of that kind of takes care of itself just by the way that we try to put the schedule together and just try to map it out. And then when there’s a longer stretch, you may have to dial back on a particular player. But I think probably just when you become a head coach, you try to focus on the things that get the team ready and what they need and what each guy needs. And then some more of the GPS stuff became really popular and prevalent, and anything that can help us keep the players out there, I’m all for.”

On with the linebacker poisition, with Christian [Elliss] and Robert [Spillane] having not played in the two games, how does he evaluate the guys who have played:

“Yeah, I mean, I think KJ [Britt] has been physical, which is good. I think he’s using that as a strength. He was physical in the Philadelphia joint practices. The young guys continue to kind of factor and then, I mean, there’s a lot of things that they need to learn, and there’s a lot of different defenses and situations and a lot of plays. There’s a lot of firsts for Nam [Namdi Obiazor] and Khalil [Jacobs]. And then certainly Riley Wilson in that group too. And then Chad [Muma] came in last year mid-season and helped us and helped us in the kicking game. So, we’ll continue to see where those guys are. And, I wouldn’t anticipate seeing Khalil out there this week. he’s working through something. I’d say we got a pretty good list of guys, Marcus Bryant would be in that category. I wouldn’t plan on seeing Craig Woodson out there today. Xavier [Holmes] won’t be out there today. Lan [Larison] and Jam [Miller] probably won’t be out there today either.”

On how much the unusual kind of start date that they have play into the decisions he’s making about this final preseason game:

“I mean, I think whether we played Sunday or Wednesday, I don’t think that really would factor into it. I think it factors into just, ‘Are we getting the work that we need?’ And then however you just back it out from the normal, the start date on Wednesday. And, for example, I think the Friday before becomes a Tuesday, and we just kind of live in a Sunday-to-Sunday world. So when you play on a Wednesday, you just kind of adjust everything back from there.”

On if the starters are not playing Thursday, how he can use this preseason game to prepare his coaching staff to get ready for the regular season, or if he feels they need that kind of acclimation:

“Yeah, I haven’t— the coaches have been involved in both of the preseason games, and I think the communication’s been good. The headset’s been good, but I don’t think as long as we have 11 guys out there, the coaches are going to be working through their communication and how we need to fix things. And then whether I tell Josh [McDaniels], ‘Hey, we got 4 downs,’ or what the line is that we’re going to kick, or ‘hey, this is a 2-minute situation.’ So it was good that we had a lot of those situations come up. Saturday.”

On the fact Joejuan Williams said that he had a chance to call a play in the second half Saturday, and what prompted him to give him that opportunity:

“Well, I just appreciate the program that we have with the Bill Walsh Internship Program. I think Clint McMillan does a fantastic job of identifying a great group of qualified coaches that then we meet with and invite. They commit a lot to our program and to our players, and so I had Abdullah call a third-down pressure. I told him, ‘It better be a pressure,’ and it worked, and we got off the field. Joejuan called a defense. Brad Davis called a run. We didn’t gain many yards. He said the back made a bad cut. And then Javon called a pass. So again, I just feel like I appreciated what they did and thought I’d give them an opportunity to pick a play that they wanted to call throughout the game.”

On the fact in the past he had Terrell [Williams] call –

“Terrell [Williams] was the head coach. He acted as the head coach for the 3 days prior to the game because I thought that was an earned opportunity for him. Something that I want to continue to do once we get established here. I didn’t want to cut you off, but I can go back and explain what I did. And he handled the team meetings for the 2 days prior to the game. He met with the officials. He worked the challenges. He talked to the coaches. He handled the media, the postgame. Thought that that was – we talk about trying to grow coaches – I try to think of ways to do it and I thought that that was a good one.”

On the preseason has been such a hot topic. People say that it should be eliminated, ‘You should just televise the joint practices instead,’ and if he views this aspect of giving the coaches that type of elevated opportunity as a potential under-seen value and keeping the preseason or just—

“Well, I think that’s part of it. I think that that’s certainly part of it. And these weren’t like plays just off the top of their head. They were actually on the game plan that they looked at, and whether Zak called it or Josh called it, they were on the call sheet. So I just think trying to be creative and find ways to develop everybody that we have when we identify the people that we have here that can continue to grow and do a good job, I think it’s always a good thing.”

“So whenever the game is, the situation, preseason, regular season, we just have to make sure that we have a plan and that – we’re trying to do everything that we can to get the most out of those games and certainly win them. And I think that that was clearly obvious and evident from the way that our guys played certainly in the second half on Saturday, I thought guys, they really responded.

On if he anticipates the team being active in either the trade market or waiver wire to fill in some areas of depth:

“I mean, just like we do always every year. You know what I mean? That won’t change. We did that last year. We tried to, again, when you’re claiming 31st and you’re claiming 4th, there’s a big difference.”

On the fact he mentioned the other night that he feels like they’re not very deep, if there’s a message trying to be sent there by him in that situation:

“No, I got asked this this morning – we’re all on the same page. Like, there’s no front office. There’s no back office. There’s the Patriots. There’s me, there’s Eliot, there’s Ryan [Cowden], there’s Stretch [John Streicher]. I told you those are the people that we rely on to make decisions. So there is no message. It just was— Mike [Reiss] asked me, I think, about the starters playing. I mean, whatever, we lost a couple guys that aren’t going to be with us, so you can only play that for so long. You can only do that for so long, and we’re going to need to prepare the football team and be smart and make sure that we’re as ready to go as we possibly can. And the depth was about is about taking the guys that we have and building them and then identifying if there’s other people that we can add to the roster. We’ll continue to try to do that.”

On if he feels he gets more value out of a joint practice versus preseason games and where the injury risk falls between the two:

“I mean, I know the data will tell you one thing, but there were some really good opportunities and moments during Saturday night’s game that we wouldn’t be able to replicate with the Eagles. Fourth-and-one situations, just the live tackling players, the ability to adjust quickly, our ability to run the football, to finish runs, to push the piles. There’s a lot of benefits to that game that I saw on Saturday.”

On the fact he’s in return to play, that’s the focus for Christian right now, given the time he’s missed, about as many padded practices as he’s participated in, if he has any concern at this stage about his potential readiness for week 1:

“I’m going to focus on today. I’m not ready to talk about week 1. I hope that – we have to do everything we can to get guys ready. Each guy has to be ready individually. And then I have to find a way to make sure that the football team is ready and that we’re conditioned and ready to go.”

On the fact Caleb Lomu it seemed like in the past 2 preseason games, his recovery ability has really stood out, the ability to maybe stay on blocks even if it hasn’t been perfect, and if he’s seen it the same way, and what are some things he can do to make sure he wins earlier in the rep to avoid having to recover:

“Yeah, I mean, I don’t think you have to be – you don’t want to rely on being able to recover too much. I think just, being square, throwing your hands, playing with a good base, not get overextended is things that can help you.”

On if Behren Morton is going to get a chance to tryout at punter:

“Maybe, maybe. His plus 50 has to improve. And then we need some more hang time and not kick it right down the middle. At least they bounced, and then went forward. So that was positive.”

On how he knew he could do that, if he raised his hand at the time, how did that happen:

“No, I just know who can punt. I wasn’t going to go to [Lorentz] Metz or one of the offensive linemen. I know that every quarterback’s probably been a punter, and they were the shortstop on the baseball team and they were the shooting guard on the basketball team. It’s kind of what happens, you know what I mean? And it wasn’t going to be Drake [Maye] – Behren was the obvious choice that any one of you would have went to.”

(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.)

About Ian Logue

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.

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