The Patriots/Mike Vrabel Relationship is Bourbon for My Soul

Usually by this point of any NFL training camp, the routine starts to get tedious and repetitive for everybody. Veterans, noobs, coaches, staff and media alike. It’s the nature of watching people practice doing something that no one’s going to remember and won’t count for another month or so. It gets boring as hell by the third or fourth week. It’s why every sports movie boils the preparation down to a one-minute montage over a pulsating synthesizer song.

Which is why the Patriots being down in Nashville for joint practices comes at the perfect time. Because, while it’s still just football dress rehearsals, they also include one of my favorite dynamics with this team. It’s not the fact that no one is undermining their coach by bitching about having to travel to joint practices the some highly paid superstars who shall remain nameless do.

And it’s not even about somebody putting a death grip on the New Facial Hair of the 2019 Off-season Award with this awesome, “Super Trooper”-worthy mustache.

It’s the whole relationship the guy hidden behind that ‘stache has with the Patriots. With respect to other former Pats’ players and coaches scattered throughout the league, I don’t think there’s a man, woman or child among them the current team likes as much as they do Mike Vrabel. It’s a mutual bro-love that has been on display from practically the minute Air Kraft One touched down at the airport.

From Vrabel breaking balls about Brady walking onto the field and Brady barking at him to pay attention his own shit:

To them hugging it out, their old postseason QB-TE connection still intact:

To Vrabel committing age discrimination against a tight end who was a rookie on the 2004 championship team:

To the Patriots rookie hazing consisting of the new guys having to sing “Happy Birthday” to Vrabel like the waitstaff at Shoney’s:

To him actually breaking a Patriots huddle:

I know what you’re saying. That in the long run, it’s not going to help either team win a game and the friendship between a former linebacker/tight end and his old team doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But in the words of Lt. Frank Drebin, this is our hill. These are our beans.

Never forget how it was being spun around here back in 2009 when Vrabel was shipped to Kansas City as a late throw-in in the Matt Cassel trade. The conventional wisdom said that trading him to Scott Pioli’s new team was punishment for him being the team’s union rep and suggesting that maybe the players deserved a cut of all the income from the retail shops opening up around Gillette. (Like any boss of a major company would ever be so vindictive towards the idea of labor unions upsetting the power dynamic. That would never happen.)

After that, for years we heard it repeated early and often that Vrabel got hosed. He was bitter about it. His old teammates were bitter about it. GM Belichick had lost his locker room and would never, ever get it back. And the new hotness was “player’s coaches” like Rex Ryan. When the truth is that Vrabel is a Made Man in the Belichick Mafia and always will be. He has a genuine, permanent appreciation for the way GM Bill plucked him from obscurity at the bottom of Dick LeBeau’s depth chart in Pittsburgh and turned him into a champion. Something that became obvious once he started coaching at Ohio State and talked his old mentor into drafting Nate Ebner, who’s still with the team eight seasons later.

And now look at where we are. For 20 years we’ve been hearing what a miserable, thankless, unrewarding experience it is playing in New England for this coach. I’m still waiting to hear one of his former players who mattered one iota (that excludes you, Cassius Marsh) to ever complain after he leaves. For sure it won’t ever be Mike Vrabel.