Ty Law Says Mike Vrabel Used to Pass Around a Flask of Whiskey on the Way to Patriots Practices. That Tracks.

Streeter Lecka. Getty Images.

Personally, I have very little experience when it comes this stuff, because it's been so long since my team has taken a ride on the Coaching Carousel. I mean, I know it happens every January. For some franchises more than others. As "Thunder" Kraft pointed out in the press conference where he introduced his new coach, since he bought the Patriots 30 years ago he's hired three head coaches. In that time, the rest of the league combined has hired 244. So you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little unclear on how this all works. 

So I ask you, is it always this slow? For instance, if a coach with over 300 wins and six Super Bowl wins on his resume suddenly hits the job market, is he always still unemployed almost two weeks later? Alright, that's a bad example, since there's no empirical data to go on. So let me change it to, when a guy with six seasons and almost 100 games of experience who took a 9-7 team to the conference championship in just his second season and won COTY two years later is available, does he usually go this long without any kind of indication about where he might be headed? 

Logically, Mike Vrabel should be the second hottest head coaching candidate in the job market. But aside from one ESPN speculation that the Seahawks would make sense for him, the silence has been deafening. Which strikes me as bizarre. But like I said, I've got no experience when it comes to this topic. When you're looking for expertise, try a Browns fan. 

What I can say is that in my world, Vrabel just got a huge boost from his old teammate and my old regional cable pregame show cohost and NFL Hall of Famer Ty Law:

… who just told a story that should boost Vrabel's job prospects into the stratosphere:

“We did it in practice. Mike Vrabel used to have the flask, so we’d all go to Vrabel and hit the flask. He had some whiskey or something. I was a coffee guy.

"He had everybody else getting a flask. Back then, we used to have to drive to practice. Before the beautiful Gillette Stadium in Foxboro. We were driving over there with helmets and shoulder pads on just being silly. And hell yeah, we were taking drinks in the car!

"Coach Parcells, Pete, when we were over in the other practice facility, it was going down on that little five-minute drive—especially when it was cold outside.”

Now, just to clarify, because things get a little convoluted when you're doing a conversational show like this, Vrabel was signed by Belichick in 2001. So neither Bill Parcells nor Pete … Carroll? … would've factored into this story. 

However, it was the last year of the old Foxboro Stadium. So it would make sense that they had to drive to a few minutes from the stadium to practice, Pop Warner-style. Because that place was a dump. The worst facility for any pro team in any sport built in the last 100 years, at least. Ringed by a dirt parking lot with less structural integrity than a motocross pit. So it follows they wouldn't have a place to practice except up Route 1 someplace.

What makes even more sense: Vrabel carrying a hip flask of whiskey. Even without knowing about until now, it's one of those things you would've just presumed. That's an old school thing to do for a throwback kind of player. Who, obviously from hearing Law talk about how he took a pull, along with a lot of his teammates, was on a throwback team. With a throwback sensibility. Passing around a bottle of the amber before practice on a cold day is the kind of thing John Madden's Raiders would've done. Then took the field, worked their asses off to get ready for Pittsburgh, then hit a bar after and closed the place. Obviously it worked for them. And since Law and Vrabel's defense carried this team to it's first Super Bowl win that year, there's no arguing with the results. 

So if I was an NFL owner (and only by an accident of birth am I not), I'd be firing up my private jet and sending it to wherever Vrabel happens to be at the moment and flying him back to me to sign on the line which is dotted. Sure. there'll be some self-righteous Puritans who object to these sorts of shenanigans and will protest. But I don't want their support. Or their money. Or them ruining my nice taxpayer funded stadium by taking seats with giant sticks up their asses. I'd rather weed them out. And hire the kind of players' coach who knows his team well enough to understand that when you're asking guys to put their health on the line day in and day out, once in a while they're going to need a drop o' the pure to keep their spirits up. 

So well played, Ty Law. Vrabel should hire him as his agent.