Ryan HockensmithFeb 7, 2026, 08:30 AM ETCloseRyan Hockensmith is a Penn State graduate who joined ESPN in 2001. He is a survivor of bacterial meningitis, which caused him to have multiple amputation surgeries on his feet. He is a proud advocate for those with disabilities and addiction issues. He covers everything from the NFL and UFC to pizza-chucking and analysis of Tom Cruise’s running ability.Follow on XMultiple Authors
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THIS IS A TIME of massive joy in the middle of Gillette Stadium, and yet Mike Vrabel is running from it. He shakes hands with Houston Texans coach DeMeco Ryans and darts off the field as his New England Patriots celebrate a trip to the AFC title game. It’s not a sprint. But it’s not a jog, either. This run is important.
“This is a tough game, a physical game,” Vrabel tells me during a news conference. “They’re beat up and banged up, and I want to thank them. I want to see them and say that. That is a good chance to be appreciative of them and their efforts.”
He sprints because he doesn’t want to miss a single player on their way in. He has done it enough to know that some guys head in right away after a tough day at the office. So he can’t let them beat him, and he will sacrifice any fun in the middle of the field in favor of showing gratitude in the cover of the tunnel. There’s no place he’d rather be.
Over the next 15 minutes, players wander in sporadically, each time with the guy in orange leaping forward to yell, “Be careful! The ground is a mess.” Vrabel tells them things like, “Great job today” and “Thank you for what you did out there.” Receiver Kayshon Boutte gets an especially long embrace. Boutte had a remarkable game-clinching touchdown catch on the day, and Vrabel pulls him in close to say, “I’m proud of you.”
The warmth of the exchanges comes from a shared understanding of the bruising nature of what they have in common. In this case, it’s football. But this kind of appreciation can also be seen between siblings at a family barbecue, two reunited Army buddies or a pair of jujitsu black belts who used to train together. This might be a sixth love language, because none of the accepted five manage to capture Vrabel’s brand of Linebacker-itsu.
Vrabel has a variety of moves that he uses in the tunnel. Hugs. Handshakes. Back slaps. Half headlocks. Full headlocks. Sometimes he’ll high-five and then smack his right hand onto a guy’s chest, while at the same time squeezing his left hand on the player’s back. He couldn’t compact an actual car with that clamp, but a junior high kid would probably need to see a doctor afterward.
“He’s still got a lot of muscle to him,” cornerback Alex Austin says. “When he grabs hold of you, you feel it.”
With some guys, Vrabel turns into a combination striker. As Boutte approaches, Vrabel starts clapping and bouncing around on his feet, then does a handshake, arm pull-in followed by a big hug, then a little shove away. Somewhere in the middle of that Manny Pacquiao combo exchange, Vrabel manages to whisper his words of encouragement into Boutte’s ear. “That was a great moment for me,” Boutte says later.
“He’s got a sarcasm that I haven’t really figured out 100% yet,” Maye says. “He’s got a tough sarcasm where I want to laugh, but you don’t really want to.”
There’s nothing but smiles on this frosty Sunday afternoon, though. Maye enters the tunnel at an Olympic speed-walker trot but encounters the same stadium worker. This is the franchise’s incredible young hope, so the guy dials up an all-out yelp for Maye. “Slow down, please … it’s very wet!” he yells. “Please.”
Vrabel stops, then pivots to refasten himself to his spot in the tunnel. There’s still some more Linebacker-itsu to give out.
THERE HAVE BEEN FEWER Mike Vrabels than you’d think. Plenty of former players have become successful coaches, and quite a few of the hard-nosed, tough ex-player types, too (think Mike Ditka, Mike Singletary, Dan Campbell). But most are former quarterbacks, and then there’s a giant class of coaches who never played the game at a high level. According to NFL.com, of the 500-plus head coaches who have been hired since the 1970 merger, only 105 have played in at least one NFL game.
“I’ve had coaches before who would pop you, and then you push them back a little and they say, ‘Hey, take it easy,'” guard Marcus Bryant says. “But with Vrabes, you can really strike him — he’s sturdy.”
Vrabel has the head man title on his business card, so nobody questions that his voice is the most powerful in the building. But his presence is a physical one as much as anything else, and he doesn’t need to wear his three Super Bowl rings to prove his aura. Players just know. And if they don’t, they realize it almost immediately with the nature of his coaching.
He might not want in the game, but he loves to be around it. Before the Houston playoff game, Vrabel meanders around the field, less like he is wandering and more like an ex-player’s stalk. He occasionally jumps in drills, half-heartedly covering TreVeyon Henderson and Rhamondre Stevenson as they catch 5-yard passes during warmups.
Vrabel says he goes out of his way to walk around the weight room and cafeteria when players are there. He can’t do 53 one-on-one conversations every week, but he can have nonstop dialogue with everybody, even in small groups, where players feel that he is invested in them personally.
“I try to be as approachable as possible,” Vrabel says. “I think the biggest thing is getting out of your office. Just because your door is always open doesn’t mean players will come in and talk.”
“The team I was with before, the meetings would be two or three minutes long, and I don’t remember the head coach ever coming in,” he says. “My experience in the NFL had been that the head coach was more of a CEO who delegated. With the Patriots, we have more of a consistent identity, and the identity is Vrabes.”
The phrase is a reminder to them that they need to be as unwavering as he is. The original point of the saying had been to encourage them to be the same team on the road as they are in Foxborough. But “pack your identity” seems to have simply morphed into the Patriots’ identity, regardless of time, date and place. It worked: With the win in Denver, the Patriots became the first team in NFL history to go 9-0 on the road in a single season.
Vrabel bristles a little when credit gets thrown his way for turning around a franchise that went 4-13 two years in a row and is now headed to the Super Bowl. “I do this for the players,” Vrabel says. “I’ve been in their position. I have, and it’s amazing. I want other people to feel that feeling. Trust me, I’m fine. I do this for the players, to be able to experience this with their families and with the other coaches.”
His pulse never gets too high or low, and neither does his team’s on this day. The Patriots claw back in the second half as a staggering snow-and-wind sandwich descends onto Empower Field. By the time the Patriots finish off a 10-7 win to get to the Super Bowl, the mountain air has gone from bitter to downright mean. It’s so smothering that at various points in the second half, a few birds could be seen flying into the stadium and then struggling to be able to figure out how to get back out.
Once everything is set up, Vrabel, Maye and Patriots owner Robert Kraft all go onto the stage. Maye is somehow sleeveless as he accepts the trophy in the middle of what has become Antarctica over the past two hours. Maye talks to Nantz, then looks around and asks what he should do with the trophy. Nantz tells him he can take it with him and Maye disappears off the stage with it.
Every player has congregated around the stage, but the cold gets too ferocious for even the thickest-skinned Pats. Players start running down the field and out through the visitors tunnel the second the ceremony seems to be winding down. Vrabel notices and looks over a few times, like he’s in absolute bliss as AFC champions and absolute agony that he can’t be doing his normal expression of gratitude.
Maye finishes his postgame media commitments and comes out with some bags for the ride. He stops at a table to survey the drink options set up on a table close to the buses. He eventually settles on a can of strawberry mandarin Fresca before wobbling over to the bus with his luggage.
Bags are dropped off everywhere, and Patriots employees are hustling to make sure all of the gear ends up underneath the right bus. At 5:32, all five buses roar to life with Patriots players and coaches ready to drive off toward the Super Bowl. Everything has been packed — including their identity.
Maye obliges, giving Vrabel more time 50 feet away to brace for his arrival. When he gets to Vrabel, Maye doesn’t slow down. He passes Vrabel to the left and reaches his right hand out to tap his coach in the belly. Vrabel counterattacks to Maye’s midsection, then begins to backpedal to tag along at Maye’s side for 10 feet. He barks words of encouragement toward Maye as he jogs backward in what looks like a full LB drop, then he finally breaks away from the quarterback when Maye goes through the locker room door.
Vrabel is a unicorn coach — a longtime NFL linebacker who learned enough offense to catch 12 passes (all touchdowns) as a quirky offensive option for the league’s most dominant modern dynasty. If he wins a Super Bowl as the Patriots coach, he’ll be the first defensive player to ever play and coach the same franchise to a title. The only other player to win Super Bowls as a player and coach for the same team, Gary Kubiak, was a backup QB for the Denver Broncos. Vrabel essentially is a 1-of-1 in NFL history.
That allows him to coach like almost nobody else can. It’s hard to imagine Andy Reid, Bill Belichick or Sean Payton jumping into drills as a scout team running back the way that Vrabel has in his coaching career, or bodying up defensive linemen the way that Vrabel likes to. The traditional NFL coach-player model has had head guys with a certain regality bestowed upon them, from which authority was derived. Players feared and respected Bill Parcells, but they never thought he was going to try to jump in and demonstrate how to cover a Sluggo route.