Why the Patriots need to hire Mike Vrabel after firing Jerod Mayo

The New England Patriots ended their 2024 campaign in the worst possible way; with a beat the Buffalo Bills. The 23-16 win gave New England a 4-13 record on the year, and it dropped them from the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft to No. 4. Immediately following the game, The Patriots fired head coach Jerod Mayosignaling the start of another new era after his underwhelming year with the team.

They expected bumps in the road with May, but his final month in charge of the team was disastrous, highlighted by a victory that it can be considered borderline negligence. There’s a decent chance Mayo suspected he was going to be fired one way or another after Week 18, so he decided to go out with a bang and hit the Patriots where it hurt, and boy did it hurt.

New England is still armed with a high draft pick, a ton of cap space and a talented quarterback in Drake Mayo, but before they can do anything, they need to rebuild their coaching staff. And with that in mind, it only makes sense for the team to go out and hire the guy they should have hired when they were in this spot a year ago in Mike Vrabel.

Why Mike Vrabel is the right guy to lead the Patriots

For most of the year, questions surrounding May’s employment status have been rampant. He was a rookie head coach who was thrown into an incredibly difficult situation. Replacing the legendary Bill Belichick was never going to be easy, let alone when it came to arguably the worst roster in the league. Mayo showed the ability to lead while working alongside Belichick, but taking over for him was a different story.

Despite all the mistakes, whether it was his poor game plans, his idiotic comments to the media that he almost always came back, or the fact that the team looked lifeless beneath him, firing May didn’t make sense until the final weeks of the season. Less than a month ago, this space said that firing Mayo was not the right move for the Patriotsand yet here we are, agreeing with Robert Kraft’s decision to fire him right after the season ends.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was obviously the win over the Bills. Everyone knew what was on the line, yet Mayo allegedly played to win the game, even though it wasn’t in the best interest of the franchise. A team’s head coach needs to do what’s best for the team, and in this case, losing to Buffalo is what should have been done. He didn’t do that, and that’s why he got fired.

New England used a quick approach to hire their guy in Mayo last year, but this time will be different. There is no internal candidate worth interviewing for the head coaching job, so the Patriots will have to conduct a full search. That will include their former player in Vrabel, who is he is reportedly ready to interview with the team on Thursday.

Even before Mayo was fired, Vrabel was associated with his workso it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he’s the favorite to feature now that Mayo is gone. And quite frankly, hiring Vrabel is the move New England should have made last offseason. As we just saw in 2024 with May’s experiment blowing up in the team’s face, this is not an opportunity the team can afford to miss.

Vrabel played for the Pats from 2001 to 2008, winning three Super Bowls with the team. Just like Mayo, he was adored by fans as a player, but unlike his fellow former quarterback, Vrabel has coaching experience. He led the Tennessee Titans from 2018 to 2023, turning them into the top team in the AFC before the front office pulled the rug out from under him by tearing up their roster.

In 2024, Vrabel spent time with the Cleveland Browns as a coaching consultant, and it became clear that he would be arguably the best candidate in this head coaching cycle fairly early on. The New England connection makes sense, but other than that, Vrabel is exactly what this team needs, especially after enduring May’s disastrous tenure at the helm.

The Patriots need someone with experience as a head coach. Their staff, along with Mayo, was woefully unprepared to support him, a direct result of the transition from Belichick, who typically had one of the smallest coaching staffs in the league, to Mayo, a first-year head coach. With a guy like Vrabel, New England would have a little more leeway in that department.

Vrabel is a no-nonsense guy who will do whatever it takes to win. During the Titans’ prime with him at the helm, Vrabel turned the team into an elite defensive team while crafting an offensive game plan that focused on maximizing their best players in Derrick Henry and AJ Brown. It was effective, and if they got a little more help on offense, that team could make some real noise during Vrabel’s time with them.

In New England, the building blocks for a top-notch defense are already in place, as Belichick showed us in 2023. And offensively, the Patriots have their supposed quarterback of the future in Maye, whose ceiling may already be higher than Tannehill’s. New England is armed with the resources to make significant roster upgrades around May this offseason, making their head coaching hire extremely important.

If it wasn’t clear this team needed a guy like Vrabel last offseason, it is now. He knows what it takes to win in Foxboro, and unlike May, he has the experience to make this team reach its full potential. Craft he knows he was wrong Mayo’s hiring last offseason. This time around, he can’t afford to make the same mistake, which is why New England needs to do whatever it takes to bring Vrabel to town.