Pats Pulpit
For Christian Barmore, the New England Patriots’ joint practices with the Minnesota Vikings were a tale of two different days. After being a limited participant on Wednesday, who was held out of full-team work, he received an uninterrupted workload during Thursday’s session.
That type of usage is nothing new for the 26-year-old. The Patriots under first-year head coach Mike Vrabel and new sports performance director Frank Piraino have managed his workload all summer. Their hope is to best prepare him for what will be a comeback season from a bout with blood clots that disrupted his 2024 campaign.
Barmore understands that his unusual situation warrants a different approach. That does not mean the situation isn’t also tough on him, something he admitted on Thursday.
“It’s unreal. That’s a big challenge,” Barmore said after practice. “But my coaches and my trainers are people that are here for me all the time, that I talk to. Coach Vrabel always talks to me. I love working with Vrabes. He just always tells me, ‘We know what we’re doing.’ I’m just doing what they want me to do, and I’m just doing everything they have me do to progress.”
A second-round draft pick by the Patriots in 2021, Barmore was an impact player right away and developed into one of the most disruptive interior defensive linemen in the NFL over his first three years in the league. The organization did therefore not waste any time to sign him to a contract extension, locking him up through 2028 via an $84 million deal last April.
However, just three months after putting pen to paper, he received his blood clots diagnosis. As a consequence, he sat out virtually all of training camp and preseason plus the first 10 regular season games. Barmore did return in mid-November, but he failed to contribute on his usual level and was eventually sent back to the non-football injury list for the remainder of the season.
Now more than a year removed from his initial diagnosis, the team is still taking it slow with Barmore. Whenever actually on the field, however, he has looked good — something the Vikings found out first-hand on Thursday.
“What I’ve seen is a player that is excited and that is coachable,” Vrabel said about Barmore back in the spring. “Extremely coachable. He has some versatility. He’s rushed inside. He’s lined up outside. He’s worked extremely hard. You’ve seen him chase and play with great effort down the field. I’m excited to see where he’s at, but I’ve seen a lot of just improvement and a lot of engagement from him since the time that we’ve been here.”
