FOXBORO, Mass. — New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel was looking for a way to break up the monotonous nature of the NFL season. Days bleed together, always with the same structure. It can feel repetitive.
So Vrabel set out to make Fridays more fun for the Patriots this season. Essentially, the message was this: Work as hard as you can Monday through Thursday, then we’ll have some light-hearted moments on Friday, while practicing and prepping for the next game.
That’s how the Patriots found themselves in their facility’s auditorium for a weekly team meeting two days before the season opener, wondering what they were watching. On the big screen, Vrabel showed some video clips from a high school game, but it was unclear whose they were or when they were from.
After about 90 seconds, Vrabel made the reveal. They were watching defensive end K’Lavon Chaisson’s prep highlights. And he was going to join the team’s six full-time captains as a captain for that week’s game.
Thus, a new tradition began for the Pats, who host the Houston Texans in a divisional playoff game Sunday afternoon. To announce the weekly captain, Vrabel shows the player’s high school highlights. It has become a guessing game for players as they try to figure out whose clips they’re watching.
“We’re all whispering to each other, trying to figure it out,” left guard Jared Wilson said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s a California team. OK, who’s from California?’”
Vrabel’s culture-setting skills have been dissected and written about at length. But part of the reason he gives players and staffers a hard time, often in a joking manner, is that he wants people to be able to laugh at themselves. Not to take themselves too seriously.
So there’s a bit of that, too, in the high school film, with plenty of jokes made at the expense of that week’s captain. No one knows that better than right tackle and Week 2 captain Morgan Moses, who turns 35 in March.
“I knew immediately it was him because it was in black and white,” joked offensive lineman Caedan Wallace.
It wasn’t actually in black and white for the high school class of 2010 graduate. “But it was a little grainy,” Wallace said. “You could tell it was from a different time.”
“At first, they said they couldn’t play my high school tape because they didn’t have VHS tapes around here,” Moses said.
“You watch some guys,” wide receiver DeMario Douglas said, “and it’s like, ‘Of course you were getting big college offers. Look how slow those other guys are.’”
Vrabel has even shown high school highlights of the coaching staff and assistants.
“Those are the hardest ones to guess,” backup quarterback Tommy DeVito said.
The announcement of a game captain is just one way Vrabel has kept Fridays upbeat during this magical Patriots season that has them 15-3, including last Sunday’s playoff win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
Before the season opener, Vrabel instructed first-round pick Will Campbell that he’d have to kick off the Friday team meetings. He’d need to deliver a monologue of sorts, full of inside jokes, with a recap of the week.
The early reviews were mixed. But Campbell worked hard, took to the coaching and improved.
“His slow, Southern drawl is the reason it’s so great,” said Wilson. “It takes forever to get to the punchline, but once he says it, it’s great.”
The players say they know when the funniest jokes are about to be delivered because Campbell can’t hide it.
“Most of the time he’ll start giggling before he even gets to the punchline because he knows what’s coming,” DeVito said.
Moses, who plays opposite Campbell, is a frequent target of the jokes.
“Obviously, I’m the butt of the joke somewhere in the speech about being the older guy on the team and being sent to the retirement home,” Moses said. “But it’s all fun. When you can take a breath away from football and just be human and enjoy some laughs with one another, and it’s friendly fire, it’s always good. I think it brings a different element and some joy to Fridays.”
That vibe continues on the field. Fridays are a busy day at the facility with the team wrapping up the game plan. The focus is on red zone work.
Then, at some point during practice, Vrabel will call out two assistant coaches to go head-to-head in a one-on-one rep as a wide receiver and cornerback. Players root for their position coach or the assistant on their side of the ball.
“We take it pretty seriously,” Wallace said. “I look forward to it. The coaches go out there and try to ball.”
The clear front-runner for most impressive coach has been Jeremy Springer, the team’s 36-year-old special teams coordinator who played linebacker at UTEP, though offensive assistant Riley Larkin and quarterbacks coach Ashton Grant have caught the eyes of players as well.
Either way, it’s a fun moment for players to flip the script and be the ones cheering on their coaches to make plays.
“I just feel like you put a lot into it,” Vrabel said of the long week and the importance of having fun. “This isn’t the easiest profession in the world, and we only get one chance (to play) a week. And so, if we only try to focus on having fun during the game, it’s a small window of our week.”
Which leads us back to the announcement of game captains and high school tape. It has made a strong impression on players. Guys in the locker room are still talking about the moves Week 18 captain Rhamondre Stevenson made while playing running back at Centennial High in Las Vegas. And how hard it was to figure out center Garrett Bradbury was their Week 11 captain, given that he was usually playing tight end at Charlotte Christian School in North Carolina.
“There’s some surprisingly bad high school football highlights,” Vrabel said. “And then there’s some good ones. Yeah, just trying to keep things light on the Friday tape. … It’s a good way to recognize somebody.”
