New coach Mike Vrabel is trying to bring about a culture change after the Patriots went through two straight 4-13 campaigns.
New coach Mike Vrabel is trying to bring about a culture change after the Patriots went through two straight 4-13 campaigns.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
FOXBOROUGH — As Mike Vrabel puts the Patriots through their offseason paces, he and his coaching staff are installing an offensive system, a defensive system, and special teams schemes. But the centerpiece of this offseason isn’t being installed. It’s being instilled — a new culture.
Boy, do the Patriots need a culture colonic after back-to-back 4-13 seasons. Vrabel is smart enough to realize that the culture component will be crucial for the Patriots progress. It’s part of a team learning how to win, which in the NFL starts with learning how not to lose. The Patriots spent freely in free agency to upgrade, but they’re also heavily invested in culture-building. Culture is a cost-free element that a club can control, unlike player interest and performance.
Vrabel’s culture club has been a hit thus far with widespread player praise and buy-in. Of course, culture is no substitute for talent. On paper, the Patriots still appear a little lacking in that category. Rebuilding teams that fixate on culture often do so because they know they don’t possess the talent to match their goals yet.
Culture is great, but it can’t get to the quarterback (the Patriots were last in the NFL in sacks last year with 28). It also can’t generate big plays in the passing game (New England ranked last in passing yards per game at 176.2 and 30th in points per game at 17).
That’s why when I asked Vrabel on Monday, the first day of the team’s mandatory minicamp, how much culture can impact wins and losses and whether it can compensate for talent deficiencies, he didn’t overpromise.
“I don’t know what the analytical number is, but I think that there’s a style in which you can play that can lead to success,” said Vrabel. “But again, that’s never going to make up for execution and players making plays. Hopefully, we’re prepared, we play hard, and we get good enough that we can take advantage of bad football.”
Vrabes is ever the realist.
Being able to take advantage of bad football is a theme Vrabel has harped on since his introductory press conference. It’s the first step in the football self-help manual for flailing teams. Cull your miscues and capitalize on your opponents’.
Patriots outside linebacker Harold Landry III entered the league out of Boston College in 2018. He spent six seasons playing for Vrabel in Tennessee. He knows what Vrabel’s culture is supposed to look like and what it can provide.
“I think it’s going great. You know, he’s big on players connecting with players and players connecting with coaches, and I feel like he’s doing a great job instilling that here each day,” said Landry.
“I feel like as we continue to stack days out here, we’re also getting closer in the locker room, and the closer you are with everybody you go to work with the harder you’re going to play for them.”
Having played for Mike Vrabel for six seasons with the Titans, Patriots linebacker Harold Landry understands the tone the new coach is trying to set in Foxborough.
Having played for Mike Vrabel for six seasons with the Titans, Patriots linebacker Harold Landry understands the tone the new coach is trying to set in Foxborough.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
The current of energy, activity, and optimism in Fort Foxborough is palpable.
Part of Vrabel’s allure is that while he’s the boss, he can still be one of the guys. During Monday’s minicamp, when Drake Maye and the offense were running some plays in a three-quarter speed fashion there was Vrabel, wearing a green pinny with No. 25, shadowing receivers as a linebacker as Maye made his reads.
“He actually be chasing me. I catch a ball, he’s chasing me on the thing. It’s a different culture and everything,” said wide receiver DeMario “Pop” Douglas. “I feel like it just shows us that we have a coach that is all-in.”
If there’s one tenet of the new Vrabel culture that deserves to be put on a marquee with neon lights, it’s accountability. When a team features young players at prominent positions like the Patriots do — quarterback, left tackle, cornerback, and edge — a certain allowance for “my bad’ creeps in with bad teams.
Vrabel wants to stamp that out.
“I think coach Vrabel has kind of set that tone when he came in here of, ‘Hey, if you’re not doing the right thing for a period of time, there’s going to be some consequences,’ ” said Maye “And, I think that’s something we need to establish. . . . If somebody’s not doing their job and repeating mistakes, I think there’s got to be a consequence.
“I think at some point it hurts the football team. I think it hurts everybody in that building.”
If you think I’m overstating the culture cultivation, then listen to Vrabel’s hand-picked front office aide, vice president of player personnel Ryan Cowden. He admitted culture-building is a driving force in the roster renovation.
“There’s an idea here that can’t be overstated enough, that if you don’t get the person right, then a lot of that other stuff can go by the wayside,” Cowden said during the draft. “I think we’ve been trying to be very intentional about the people to build the foundation that coach Vrabel . . . has here for this football team.”
There’s a downside when you preach culture over everything. If a talented player runs afoul of your mandated esprit de corps , the expectation is that you’ll drop the hammer because culture must be preserved.
The party boat escapades and off-season program engagement level of high-profile wide receiver Stefon Diggs represented a little bit of a stress test of Vrabel’s culture commitment. You’ll be happy to hear that Douglas referred to Diggs as a hard-working “leader.”
FOXBOROUGH, MA — JUNE 9 - Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs (center) goes through a drill during the first day of mandatory minicamp in Foxborough.
FOXBOROUGH, MA — JUNE 9 - Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs (center) goes through a drill during the first day of mandatory minicamp in Foxborough.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
Vrabel is no tackling dummy. He epitomized the Patriot Way with his selfless, high-IQ playing style. But that winning culture he embodied for Bill Belichick faded away like acid wash jeans once Tom Brady exited the picture.
Vrabel values culture, yes, but he also said this offseason: “You can’t win, and you can’t do what we want to do with just a bunch of good dudes.”
Amen.
Sorry to spoil the good vibes, but culture won’t transform the Patriots into a 10-win team. But it can help them avoid being a four-win club for the third year in a row.
You have to walk before you can run.
Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at christopher.gasper@globe.com. Follow him @cgasper and on Instagram @cgaspersports.