Patriots should be ashamed of process in hiring Mike Vrabel, firing Jerod Mayo

The New England Patriots made the move everyone expected them to on Sunday, hiring former Titans head coach Mike Vrabel to fill the same position for them, according to ESPN's Mike Reiss.

It was always going to end this way, it seemed. It was too good of a fit, too logical of a move not to happen. Vrabel was a Patriots legend, hero of three Super Bowl victories and a legendary figure in the New England mythos. He was one of the key cogs of the dynasty, and had established himself as one of the most respected head coaches in the NFL during his tenure with the Tennessee Titans.

So why does the move leave me feeling kind of gross?

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Some of it is because the process of hiring Vrabel felt like such a foregone conclusion that the Patriots made a mockery out of the required processes. From the jump this offseason, Vrabel was seen as the leader in the clubhouse in New England, and the process bore that out. Kraft and company interviewed just three other candidates, and of them, only one was a coach currently working in the NFL (Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson).

The other two interviewees were Byron Leftwich and Pep Hamilton. Neither Leftwich nor have coached in the NFL since 2022, when Leftwich was the Buccaneers' offensive coordinator, and Hamilton held the same role with the Houston Texans.

In case you were wondering, both Leftwich and Hamilton were black. And they weren't exactly given the red carpet treatment by the Patriots' social media team after their interviews:

Making matters worse, the most prominent black head coaching candidate in this cycle, Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, turned down the chance to interview in New England despite interviewing for every other head coaching vacancy in the league this offseason.

Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports reported Glenn's decision was "met with praise across the league from coaches and personnel members of all colors who...believed the Krafts were making a sham of the Rooney Rule." The Rooney Rule, for those unfamiliar, states that teams have to interview at least two external candidates of color for any GM or coaching job.

Even Johnson, who has orchestrated one of the NFL's best and most exciting offenses the last three seasons in Detroit, didn't really take his virtual interview with the Patriots seriously, according to Jones, who said the Lions offensive coordinator likely used it as practice for jobs he's actually in the running for.

If your whole interview process is a sham, then what are we even doing here? What's the point of the rules if you're just going to flaunt them and not take the process seriously? Why should anyone think you're actually doing a good job of doing due diligence when you make it so painfully obvious to any observer that you aren't actually interested in doing due diligence so long as you get the guy you want?

It's not just about minority coaches (although that's certainly a massive part of it; you don't get any kind of points for hiring a black coach and firing him after one season in charge); if you're not taking the search seriously outside of the guy you think is the guy, then how can anyone be sure you're actually taking it seriously?

It doesn't hurt to look around, and take genuine stock of the coaching landscape, and bring in candidates to see if someone wows you. But when you make it clear (which, given the way the interview process went, the Patriots clearly did) that you're only interviewing someone to check a box on a sheet, or to show fans that you kicked the tires on the hottest name in coaching without really giving them a shot, you are hurting yourself and your organization by missing out on potentially great fits.

Much of my feeling of unease also likely has to do with the way the organization treated another alumni, Jerod Mayo. Mayo, a longtime member of the organization as a player and then a coach, was unceremoniously shown the door after a single season at the helm, a 4-13 campaign that few in the NFL would call anything approaching a success.

Chad Graff of The Athletic detailed some of Mayo's struggles in his singular season at the helm; he noted that the coach struggled with maintaining discipline with players while also trying to separate himself from the legendary coach he was replacing in Bill Belichick, that many in the organization realized Mayo was more raw as a head coach than they'd thought, and had the most inexperienced staff in the NFL (and maybe the most inexperienced staff in NFL history), with first time play-callers at both offensive and defensive coordinator, and first-time coaches on the offensive line, defensive line, on special teams, and at linebacker and wide receiver.

The Patriots also had the worst roster in the NFL, and it wasn't particularly close. They lacked talent at virtually every position save quarterback, and looked outclassed on a regular basis this season.

And yet, in the statement given when the Patriots fired Mayo, owner Robert Kraft said the primary cause for the dismissal was a lack of success on the field, and growth in the roster.

Going into a season like this expecting to win more than four games, with a first-time head coach and a staff that had no veteran presence whatsoever on it anywhere, with a roster as bad as this, is folly bordering on madness. It shows a stunning lack of awareness, and borders on organizational malpractice.

How can you look at this team, this year, in that division, and think "we're going to win eight games"? Or even "we're going to win six games"? Hell, the fact that Mayo managed to win four games with one-score losses to the Seahawks, Dolphins, Titans, Rams, Colts, and Bills should be enough cause to let him keep learning on the job.

And if Mayo was as unprepared to run the show as reports seemed to hint he was, how was that not clocked during the interview process? Or during his prior seasons with the team as inside linebackers coach? You knew he had no experience calling plays; defensive play-calling was done by Belichick's son Steve had done that job previously for New England's defense, so there was always going to be a learning curve.

Maybe Kraft just misread the room, misread Mayo, misread the team that badly. Or maybe Vrabel was the guy he wanted all along.

Let me paint you a picture for a second, dip a toe into the waters of conspiracy via a purely hypothetical scenario.

Vrabel was fired by the Titans on January 9 last year. The move was a surprising one, given the amount of respect he commanded in the league, but the Titans had regressed in the last couple of years and wanted to make a change. Belichick was fired by the Patriots two days later, and Mayo was immediately the leading candidate, thanks in large part to the succession plan in Mayo's contract signed the year prior, and within a day, he was named the new coach in New England.

But if Kraft had his eye on Vrabel the whole time, wouldn't it make sense to give Mayo what was likely going to be a lost year anyway, to expedite the process, honor the contract he signed, and give you more cushion to bring your true top choice in with more time and runway to build?

You get your sacrificial lamb to the altar of Belichick and his mostly unimpressive coaching tree. Then can wash your hands of it and bring in the guy you actually wanted, the branch of the Belichick tree who learned his craft through Bill O'Brien, who has all the New England ties and Patriot Way propaganda infused without all the direct links. And now you have more information to build from, and a better idea of the path back to contention.

After all, New England has seen what new franchise quarterback Drake Maye can do, and you've had a full year to figure out exactly where the biggest holes and needs are now. The roster is still a bleak and barren landscape of substandard talent and massive holes, but you've given yourself another year, another top pick, and more time to scout out a future path. Things are bad, but they're markedly better than they were a year ago, and figure to keep moving in that upward trajectory.

And the general consensus is that time is exactly what Vrabel is going to get; ESPN's Mina Kimes noted that her sense is that Kraft is going to prioritize long-term stability now that Vrabel's here. But why does Vrabel, a veteran head coach (who also hasn't exactly inspired a ton of confidence in his ability to build a winning roster, despite his clear coaching chops) with a track record of doing more with less, get more patience than Mayo, a first-time head coach with an incredibly young staff trying to take over for a legend who was notoriously tight-lipped outside of his inner circle (and grew even moreso over the last couple years of his tenure, according to Graff)?

If Vrabel goes out and wins four games next year again, does he get the same level of heat? After all, the Titans had gone 9-7 in each of the two years prior to Vrabel taking over, and went 9-7 in each of Vrabel's first two at the helm; it's not like he built them from doormat to juggernaut. And his last two years in Tennessee were not pretty; they failed to win more than seven games in any of them, and the roster got progressively worse each year. If anything, with Vrabel's reputation, another bad year in New England should get him more heat than Mayo faced.

I'm not saying Vrabel won't work in New England; he's a good coach, and will get every chance to succeed. But the fact that Mayo was so quickly shown the door despite all the disadvantages he faced in his single year in charge, and that Vrabel will be given far more grace in building the roster, should leave a bitter taste in everyone's mouth. Especially Robert Kraft's.

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