Pats Pulpit
The New England Patriots are planning to operate without their nominal defensive coordinator for a third straight week. According to head coach Mike Vrabel, the plan is for Zak Kuhr rather than Terrell Williams to lead the team’s defense into its upcoming Week 4 matchup with the Carolina Panthers.
“Right now we’ll just, I would say moving forward, kind of be where we were last week. That’s where I would anticipate it being this week,” Vrabel told reporters on Monday.
Williams and Kuhr both joined the Patriots alongside Vrabel this offseason, getting hired by the new head coach as defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach, respectively.
The defensive structure was already put to the test in March, in the aftermath of Williams suffering a medical emergency that forced him to spend several months working from his Detroit home. During his absence, which ended ahead of training camp in July, Kuhr served as New England’s stand-in DC.
He resumed that role after Week 1, when Vrabel announced that Williams would miss additional time due to “unforeseen ongoings” not related to his prior medical condition. Even though he has since returned to the facility, the 51-year-old missed the Patriots’ games against and Miami and Pittsburgh and seems like a realistic candidate to have to sit out another contest on Sunday versus the Panthers.
“We’ll kind of see where things are here going forward in the next couple of days. Terrell’s around, we’ve just got to make sure that we’re trying to build some consistency with how we do things,” said Vrabel before adding some potentially ominous remarks.
“His health is first and foremost. That’s critically important. Again, just making sure that the consistency is there so that we know what to account for and plan for. I don’t want to say that it’s fluid, but we’ll see where things are, and if he’s going to continue to help us. I just don’t know, based on the availability, what that’s going to look like. So, the communication and everything that we’ve been doing over there has been good. His ability to help us has been really good, but I also don’t want to go back and forth. I don’t think that that’s good for anybody either.”
Even though both his long and short term status is in limbo, Williams remains the Patriots’ official defensive coordinator for now.
