Sportsnaut
The New England Patriots have been one of the surprise stories of the NFL season so far. The team is sitting at the top of the AFC East with a 4-2 record and already boast an impressive win over the Buffalo Bills.
Of course, 2025 is Mike Vrabel’s first season at the helm. The coach took the 2024 season off after being fired by the Tennessee Titans. Now, Vrabel is back coaching the team he spent eight seasons with as a player. It seemed like a perfect match, and the results have been everything you could hope for at this point.
The Patriots won just four games last season, so it would’ve been reasonable to expect improvement, but not necessarily contention in Vrabel’s debut season. However, the Vrabel-led Patriots have already tied their 2024 win-total and look to be headed for many more wins this season.
Someone who isn’t surprised by Vrabel’s immediate success is Hall of Fame cornerback Ty Law. Law played alongside Vrabel on the Patriots for four seasons, so the men have some chemistry.
“I’m not surprised at Mike Vrabel,” Law said on Tuesday during WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show.” “I’m more surprised that the team responded, given that many people from last year are still here. You never know what to expect from a new coach. I had a lot of faith in Vrabel, but not so much in the team as a whole.”
As Law mentioned, he’s not surprised to see Vrabel succeeding, but he is more surprised to see the team fully buying in. After all, this roster was only good enough to win four games just last year, so it wouldn’t have been shocking to see more struggles in 2025.
The next test will be to see if Vrabel can sustain this success and beat the teams his team is supposed to beat. We already saw one bad loss, in Week 1 against the lowly Las Vegas Raiders, but the team has responded in a big way since then.
In Week 7, Vrabel has to return to Nashville to take on the Titans. It’ll be Vrabel’s first trip back since being fired and considering the Titans are one of the worst teams in the league, this is a must-win game for the Patriots.
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