The New England Patriots fielded one of the most impressive running back duos in the NFL in 2025, but head coach Mike Vrabel nonetheless sees the need for improvement. Even with Rhamondre Stevenson and TreVeyon Henderson leading the way, Vrabel wants his team to become better at running the ball.
The key word is consistency. It is something the team hopes it will improve with its offseason moves, including signing left guard Alijah Vera-Tucker, fullback Reggie Gilliam and tight end Julian Hill in free agency.
“I just want to be more consistent. We, the Patriots, want to be more consistent running the football,” Vrabel said at the NFL annual meeting earlier this week.
On paper, the Patriots were a good rushing team in 2025. They ranked sixth in attempts (494) and yards (2,191), fourth in touchdowns (22) and 14th in yards per attempt (4.4) during the regular season.
However, a closer look at their production shows that it was quite volatile. New England finished only 25th in expected points added per run (-0.089) and 26th in success rate (38.0%).
For Vrabel, this issue needs to be addressed.
“It isn’t like we’re going to run it every single play. It’s just that I felt like there were too many times where we wanted to run it, and it was just inefficient,” Vrabel explained. “Now we popped some, which were great. We had some explosives. And so then when you go back there, and you average it all out, it’s okay, but I want to be able to do it more consistently to allow for then some of the run actions in the passing game to really come alive and just to start to help us.”
The Patriots invested some serious resources in furthering their run game consistency, with Vera-Tucker, Gilliam and Hill all arriving on multi-year deals. With those contracts comes expectation, and for Vrabel it is clear: make life easier for Stevenson and Henderson, and overall become more versatile in the attack.
The Patriots experienced this first-hand in the Super Bowl, where they failed to produce a consistent effort on the ground and left themselves vulnerable against a potent pass rush.
“It’s a tough league if you have to sit there and drop back,” Vrabel said, “and throw the football as much as we did in the last game of the season.”
See More:
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