Mike Vrabel brought the Patriots back to the Super Bowl stage they know so well. He now has a chance to make NFL history

Santa Clara, California
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Mike Vrabel made his name in the NFL as a crunching outside linebacker, delivering punishment to opposing offenses and blowing up their plays on his way to winning multiple Super Bowl titles with the New England Patriots.

Now, 15 years after retiring, he’s still getting physical for the Pats – though maybe not in the way most would anticipate.

One of the defining images of this Super Bowl run for Patriots fans will be a bloodied Vrabel, grinning after a celebratory headbutt from Milton Williams after a fourth-down sack that sealed a wild card win over the Los Angeles Chargers.

Williams had just blown up the Chargers’ last-gasp comeback attempt and charged over to his head coach, getting a massive bear hug from Vrabel. Williams then instinctively delivered the prototypical football celebration – a headbutt – but completely forgot that his head coach no longer wears a helmet.

Just a little blood for Vrabel 😅 pic.twitter.com/ZXp3OKKEZ7

— NFL (@NFL) January 12, 2026

Vrabel had been telling his players they’d need to be ready to spill some blood this season. He included himself in that.

“He’s an amazing presence in our locker room, an amazing coach. Obviously, we wouldn’t be here without him,” linebacker Christian Elliss told CNN Sports. “For us, he just holds everyone to his highest standard, and he holds himself to the same standard he holds us to, and he leads by example. First and foremost, a lot of coaches in the league, they’ll talk the talk, but they won’t walk the walk. And he’s not like that.”

It’s been a slightly strange road for Vrabel to get to this point, leading his former team back to the platform to which the Patriots organization has become accustomed. If New England wins on Sunday, he’ll be the first person to win a Super Bowl as a player and a coach with the same organization.

His time as a Patriots player was iconic – three Super Bowls, a Pro Bowl appearance and enshrined into the team’s Hall of Fame – and the start of his NFL coaching life started with the same amount of success.

He was Coach of the Year in Tennessee in 2021 for the Titans, won two division titles and brought the organization to the AFC championship game in his second year in charge. Even with that success, two less-than-stellar seasons in 2022 and 2023 were all Titans leadership needed to show Vrabel the door, firing him after a 6-11 season to mild astonishment from around the league.

It was with even more astonishment that Vrabel was brought back to the Patriots. After Bill Belichick left the organization following the 2023 season, one of Vrabel’s old teammates – Jerod Mayo – became the Patriots’ new head coach and then suffered a difficult first season in charge, going 3-14. With their former star available, Robert Kraft decided to dismiss Mayo and bring Vrabel back to New England.

The cutthroat nature of that process raised eyebrows around the league. But with the Patriots going 13-4 and playing for the franchise’s seventh Super Bowl title on Sunday, it’s hard to say it wasn’t worth it.

“He’s really passionate and he’s done a really good job of just leading this team and helping us get to where we are now. Guys respect him a lot. He cares so much about us, not just as players but as human beings and I really respect him a lot for that,” rookie running back TreVeyon Henderson said.

When he was preparing for his first draft as Patriots head coach, Vrabel made a trip down to the Bayou.

Will Campbell, now the starting left offensive tackle for the Pats, was at Louisiana State University and looked like he might be the pick. But it was over what Vrabel called “a big spread” during a four-hour meal that the pick was locked.

“That was probably like the fourth time that we had been together, you know, been around each other,” Campbell said this week. “And, you know, I knew what was at stake, and they had eight or nine people there, and it was great. We had a good workout. I took them to my favorite spot in Baton Rouge to eat. They all loved it.”

“The meal was excellent,” Vrabel added. “You know, a lot of those local establishments take care of the boys down there in Baton Rouge. … And we had a good time. Will wanted to make it known that he wanted to be here. And by that visit, not when he visited our place, but when we visited there, it was clear that this was the place that he wanted to be.”

With a team chock full of rookies and a smattering of NFL veterans mixed in, forming those kinds of connections has been key to Vrabel’s successful first year in his old stomping grounds. Campbell, in particular, referred to his head coach as a mentor who has been dispensing priceless advice to players adjusting to NFL life for the first time.

He’s also singled out the big O-lineman for some extra duties, making him responsible for a stand-up routine on Fridays to bring some levity to game week preparations.

“At first, I wasn’t too excited about it because I got volunteered for it by the head coach, and there wasn’t any backing out,” Campbell said.

“We all on Friday mornings get there a little earlier and sit down in the office and get it going. Talk about the weather, add some jokes in there about some of the guys on the team and just stuff like that. The weekend updates and all that. It’s just been a fun, I think Vrabes talked about fun way to add some entertainment to our day on Fridays.”

So far, it’s worked. That’s why Williams was so pumped up that he accidentally bloodied his head coach.

“I always see him on the sideline, he always knows how to push our buttons to get us going,” Williams said on Monday.

He added, “We just don’t care. Like, obviously, we got a coach who really don’t care, so he kind of spread that message to us – we don’t care who you got, what you running, what scheme. All that matters is you put the ball down and you got something to say or something to do.

“You know, the film gonna speak for itself. And that’s the type of team that we got to go out there and try to prove that we belong and that we here. And I feel like we done that.”

Given that he played in four Super Bowls, winning three of them, Vrabel has a good bit of wisdom of what it takes to win at this stage.

“Every game is different, and don’t anticipate how it’s going to go – whether it comes down to the end-of-the-game situation or a kick or a two-minute drill, try not to predict what those are going to be,” he said Wednesday.

“Make sure that each and every situation is covered, and understand that each of them is critical, whether that’s a short yardage early in the first quarter or that’s a red zone stop late in the game to give our team a chance to win.”

He added, “You’ll have to see how the game is unfolding. But understand each situation that we’re going to be asked to execute, we’ve been through since April.”

All the Super Bowl rings

One of the things that Vrabel has tried to take from his past experiences is slowing down the whirlwind that is Super Bowl week. There’s time spent with the media every day in the early portion of the week, more cameras and lights than can be believed and demands on players’ time that simply doesn’t exist for an October game in the middle of the season.

Vrabel thought back to his first Super Bowl in 2002 when there was no week between games – the NFL had canceled a week of games in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks and moved the entire season back a week to make up for it – and it was a rush, particularly for the players who hadn’t been to that stage before.

The goal this week is to make everything feel as normal as possible, even if it’s the most abnormal week of the season.

“(We’re) trying to be intentional with the schedule, but also just trying to keep them engaged, keep them locked in, and get them to believe that something that we do at practice today is going to come up in the game, and how we handle that, or how we execute that, is could make the difference,” he said.

“And so that’s how we’ve tried to approach all our practices, is that something that you’re going to do today is going to help us win. I don’t know which play it is. I’m not sure which correction that it will be, but there’s going to be a play today that somebody is going to make or not make that’s going to make the difference in the game on Sunday.”

One would assume that all that success in New England and the return to the Super Bowl might have Vrabel feeling like he’s shown the folks in Tennessee what they missed out by letting him go. But he emphasizes that this is no comeback tale.

“There’s no redemption. I really enjoyed my time in Tennessee. Still have a home there, you know, we’ll go back. So I enjoyed my time there,” he said.

“If you do what’s right at the right times, you put yourself in enough opportunities to be lucky. I don’t know if that’s karma or not, but if you just keep doing the right thing and give yourself an opportunity, then luck usually finds you.”