Patriots HC Mike Vrabel Transcript 9/12

PATRIOTS HEAD COACH MIKE VRABEL

PRESS CONFERENCE

September 12, 2025

 

 

Q: Do you have any updated news on Terrell [Williams] and also how things are going to play out calling plays, defensively, during the game?

MV: Yes, I’m going to try to tell you everything that I feel like I could tell you, but if we have an update on Terrell, we’ll allow him to handle that or I’ll talk about that next week. Still won’t know the plan of that. Going forward, for the game, Zak Kuhr will call the game defensively. I mean, I’ll help him like I always do, but I’m excited for that. I think we’ve been prepared all week for that, for the preparation, for the game planning. All the phases of first and second down, what this team wants to try to do and how we want to try to defend them, and the keys and the plan on third down or short yardage in the red zone. So, it was a good week of preparation. I appreciate the show team doing what they did to try to give us the shifts and the motions, and it’s hard to recreate that speed, but I felt like they tried to do everything that they could for us to get us ready. So, I’ll probably have more on Terrell next week, and then we’ll go from there.

 

Q: What have you seen from Zak over the years that leads you to putting him in this position?

MV: Well, going back to just having been an offensive coach, and I watched him work at Ohio State, and when we were able to get him to Tennessee, how quickly he translated that knowledge to defense, how quickly he learned defense and what an asset he was defensively for us, especially coming from some of the college game and as some of those trends started to make their way to the National Football League, some of the spread, the RPO or things like that, he really became an asset for us defensively. He did our red zone stuff for us in Tennessee, and then continued to grow, continued to understand what we were doing, and then watching him work in the spring, work in front of the guys and prepare them in the spring, and through training camp until Terrell was back, that’s what I saw. I saw a lot of maturity, a lot of growth, but also a lot of knowledge.

 

Q: Christian [Gonzalez] and Keion [White], are they both out?

MV: They both will be out. I guess I can go through this, Keion will be out, Gonzo will be out, [Marte] Mapu will be questionable and Morgan Moses will be questionable. No other designations.

 

Q: With Keion, is that potentially a long-term concern?

MV: He’ll just be out for Sunday, I’m not going to speculate on what could happen after that.

 

Q: What are some of the unique challenges of facing a left-handed quarterback?

MV: Well, you train all these boots most of the time where they’re going to go, and you start matching the hand, trying to match the hand of a right-handed quarterback, and then all of a sudden, you come out, he throws the first one with his left hand, you put your right hand up and it whizzes over you. It’s like the time I came through into college to try to block a punt, and I roughed the punter because I realized I didn’t know he was left-footed. Came up the middle, probably gave him a hit pointer, but it was a 15-yard penalty. So, I think it’s just a good reminder of how it’s hard to train it, and we can train it in pre-practice with the coaches and things like that, just making sure that, again, the ball will come out quick. He has had some passes tipped. I wouldn’t say that he’s the leader in the clubhouse, but he’s certainly not adverse to having some of those, and we just have to be able to try to do that, try to catch one of them, or affect some of these passes in the best way that we can.

 

Q: Mike, you talked a couple times this week about player reactions and maintaining positivity and focusing on the next play. How would you describe just the team practice and reaction this week coming off of a loss and heading into Sunday?

MV: I mean, coming off a loss or a win, I think we just have to make sure that we’re consistent in what we do. This league doesn’t wait around for you, doesn’t feel sorry for you. There’s somebody there, there’s another hole waiting for you to hit it in the woods or hit it down the middle of the fairway. If you bogey the first hole, you have to be able to come back and answer, and those are the things that we try to talk about. So, what that looks like, I don’t know. I mean, we’ll see really when the game comes, is how we respond through how we start to complement each other, lift each other up, feed off each other, continue to make positive plays and continue to maintain momentum. And if we don’t have it, making a play that will create it.

 

Q: Mike, with Moses being questionable, who would be next up there? Could it be [Vederian] Lowe or [Marcus] Bryant, and could we maybe see a possible rotation down there given the weather?

MV: I would say going backwards, yeah, you could see a possible rotation anywhere to try to create that balance of guys that are playing with some energy, some effort and the things that you need to do to be able to strain and win a football game. Marcus would be the first one in. Vederian has worked hard throughout the spring and training camp to get back, was active last week, so he would be, again, an option as well. So, from where he was in the spring, trying to stay focused and into it, and rehab and recover, I think he’s been working hard.

 

Q: What have you seen from seen from Anfernee [Jennings] and the Elijah Ponder? Just getting back to the beginning of training camp, how ready are they to step in?

MV: Very ready. Yeah, very ready. I mean, I think Anfernee is very ready. I had to make a tough decision last week, we could only have so many guys active, and so I’m excited to see Anfernee play. He’s always been prepared and taken advantage of his opportunities. He’ll continue, I would imagine, to do that on Sunday, play hard, play physical and be ready to go. And Elijah has earned a role for himself on special teams and we’ll see about working him in there on defense.

 

Q: After the second preseason game, you said this is year one and we have to get it right. Now that the regular season has started, how do you balance the long view with the week-to-week grind?

MV: Well, I think that that’s a really great question. I think it’s about preparing them to win, but then also continuing to develop and build, like you said. And so, again, having things and opportunities for the younger players, whether that’s post-practice or the practice squad players, getting them what they need, having reps for them afterwards so that they can be coached and talking about watching their tape tomorrow morning with the coaches before the meetings, so that they can see their reps this week and their speed reps and just trying to get the right balance. I think that’s the biggest thing. We have to prepare to win, play to win, compete to win and never lose sight of that. That’s our short-term goal, and then the long-term goal of just putting all the pieces together is something that I think everybody tries to focus on.

 

Q: Mike, you had a quote this week on the radio where you said we’ll need to work a more consistent, fine-tuned run plan that we believe in. That got me wondering, can you give the CliffsNotes version on how you guys game plan? Do you have to approve things?

MV: No, I mean, again, this is – and I know that doing a radio show at 6:30 a.m. on Monday morning after a loss is probably going to come back to haunt me and it’s going to get picked apart, so I’ll do my best to try to explain that after a week. But, that’s the position, and we can all look over at Stacey [James]. But I get it, I’ll be there every morning, Monday, 6:30 a.m. It’s just trust in the look. Trust in the look, right? We’ve got to plan, you’ve got to block support and you can’t always figure out where they’re going to be, right? And so, do we motion to try to gain an advantage? Do we stay there and try to dig somebody out? Do we combination? And really, you just have to – until you know, you’ve got to just line up and go with your base rules, leave the widest, right? You’re going to leave the widest on some of these runs. You can’t always block. You’re not going to be able to block everybody. And so, we think, “OK, they’re going to run this pressure, they’re going to react this way.” We don’t know, and so if we motion and there’s two guys over there and there’s only one defender, then they’re not sound, but we have to be able to have some concepts in or passes in that allows us to throw the football over there. Not that you’re going to be able to do that in mid-motion, but just making sure that if you don’t know and you come out of the huddle, we’re going to our base rules. We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel when you’re not sure. And sometimes that happens with a new play. Again, we didn’t know where they were going to be on the one short yardage with TreVeyon [Henderson], but we ran it, we gained 14 yards, we were decisive and we went, as opposed to being, “Well, where are we going to put the mic?” And all this other stuff. So, just that was a reminder of being decisive and being aggressive, was all I was trying to get at. We believe in everything that we’re going to be doing and making sure that we go into a game with things that, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do. We’ve got to put four hands on this guy, we’ve got to move, we’ve got to know where a certain, particular player is and making sure that we’ve got him handled.” Those are things that come up each and every week as far as keys.

 

Q: In terms of the gameplan, especially with offense, how do you do it? Do you give a direction on Monday? Do the coordinators check in and you approve?

MV: Yeah, I usually sit in there. I usually sit in there and go through, and I have ideas, they have ideas and we’ll have a run game meeting on both sides of the football. We’ll have a pass – first and second down pass, then you start to draw plays and cards, and then you make sure that our adjustments are sound before you get the tip sheets ready for the players, move on to short yardage, third down. But yeah, I’m bouncing back and forth, trying to make sure and focus on who’s going to be playing or who’s available this week or things that we need to account for each and every week.

 

 

 

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