Eliot Wolf

Mike Vrabel To Control Patriots’ Roster?

Mike Vrabel became connected to each of the first six teams to carry a coaching vacancy this offseason, with only the Cowboys — whose official Mike McCarthy ouster came a day after Vrabel’s Patriots hire — not tied to the former Titans HC. This gave Vrabel considerable leverage in negotiations with the team he played for during most of the 2000s.

The Bears and Jets made late pushes, but the Patriots — who were connected to Vrabel before firing Jerod Mayo — were always viewed as the frontrunners. As of Sunday, it was not known if Vrabel’s leverage was enough to secure him final say on the 53-man roster in New England. De facto GM Eliot Wolf held that last year, but he might no longer wield that power.

Instead, NBC Sports Boston’s Tom Curran views Vrabel as the top decision-maker in New England now. Wolf and Vrabel met early this week, but the roles of Wolf and 2024 hire Alonzo Highsmith are being determined. The exec Vrabel wanted the Titans to name GM in 2023, Ryan Cowden, is also en route to Foxborough. Cowden may end up being the No. 2 man to Wolf in the Pats’ front office, but the Giants let him out of his contract for this opportunity. That points to a significant role for Cowden, who had been the Titans’ acting GM between the Jon Robinson firing and Ran Carthon hire.

Wolf has been with the Patriots since 2020, moving into a scouting director role in 2022. The Bill Belichick hire, once a popular GM candidate, would still stand to carry a major say in Pats personnel matters moving forward. But the arrivals of Vrabel and Cowden will undoubtedly curb his influence — perhaps by a significant degree. Wolf is believed to be tied to a four-year contract, the Boston Globe’s Ben Volin adds. How the organization proceeds with its current front office leader will be worth monitoring this offseason.

Vrabel’s power will not reach the level of Belichick’s, Curran cautions, and SI.com’s Albert Breer said (via NBC Sports Boston) the official workflow chart should feature both Vrabel and Wolf reporting to ownership. But Curran indicates Wolf will likely see less control over the Patriots’ roster compared to what he held in 2024. Considering the about-face the Patriots completed with Mayo, it is unsurprising they agreed to a Vrabel-friendly structure to help them save face after Robert Kraft had long anointed Mayo.

A desire for more control moved Vrabel onto thin ice in Tennessee, as clashes with ownership — one of which emerging after he sat with Kraft at his Patriots Hall of Fame induction during a Titans bye week in 2023 — developed during the veteran HC’s final weeks on the job. With Carthon eventually sticking around (for another year, at least), Vrabel received his walking papers after Amy Adams Strunk tired of his presence and the Titans’ downward spiral on the field. Of course, matters have worsened for the Titans — who had advanced to three straight playoff brackets from 2019-21 — since Vrabel’s Nashville departure.

This will be more of a fixer-upper than what Vrabel inherited in Tennessee. The Titans had fired Mike Mularkey after a 9-7 season that ended in the divisional round. The Patriots are coming off a 4-13 season, with win No. 4 coming only because of the Bills having secured the AFC’s No. 2 seed. In order for Vrabel to sign off on returning to New England, it certainly appears the Patriots had to provide assurances he will hold considerable say in how the roster is shaped. With a big lead in terms of projected cap space ($120MM-plus), the Pats will see that become a significant matter soon.

Patriots Hire Mike Vrabel As Head Coach

To no surprise, the Patriots have named Mike Vrabel as their next head coach. Ian Rapoport of NFL.com was the first to report that the hire was imminent.

Just yesterday, we learned that New England and Vrabel were engaged in contract discussions, a clear sign that a deal was forthcoming. Now, just over a year after he was dismissed as head coach of the Titans, Vrabel is back in the HC ranks at the helm of the team with which he won three Super Bowls as a player.

Per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Vrabel is the seventh person to become the head coach of a team that he once helped win a Super Bowl as a player. The sixth person on that list, Jerod Mayo, was fired by New England last week after just one season in the top job.

Mayo was owner Robert Kraft‘s hand-picked successor to Bill Belichick, and for a long time, it appeared that Mayo would be given at least another year in charge. After all, he inherited a team that was clearly in the early stages of a rebuild, and despite a few public missteps, it would have been easy to justify allowing him to return for 2025.

Last week, however, it was reported that those public “gaffes” — in conjunction with a locker room culture that may not have been as strong as some players portrayed it to be and an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Chargers in Week 17 — were conspiring to drive Mayo out of Foxborough. He was canned later that same day, shortly after the Pats’ regular season finale.

Speculatively, Vrabel’s availability may well have clinched Kraft’s decision to hand Mayo his walking papers. During his time as the Titans’ head coach, Vrabel established himself as one of the league’s better bench bosses, and he is highly-regarded for his game management and his ability to develop a strong culture predicated on accountability. The Titans posted a winning record in each of Vrabel’s first four seasons in Nashville, which included three playoff appearances and a trip to the AFC title game. He earned Coach of the Year honors following the 2021 campaign, but things took a turn for the worse over the 2022-23 seasons.

A seven-game losing streak to close out the 2022 season left Tennessee with a 7-10 record after a division title seemed to be in the cards, and the team slipped to a 6-11 mark in 2023. During that 2023 campaign, Ran Carthon‘s first as Titans GM following Jon Robinson‘s surprising firing, there was reportedly tension between Vrabel and Carthon (a situation that may have been exacerbated by the fact that the Titans hired Carthon instead of Ryan Cowden, who was Vrabel’s preferred Robinson successor).

Vrabel may have also wanted more input in personnel matters in Tennessee, a situation that will bear monitoring in New England. The Pats have already announced that they will retain executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf and top front office executive Alonzo Highsmith, though as Mike Reiss of ESPN.com wrote this morning, the roles of those two men are to be determined. Charles Robinson of Yahoo! Sports reports that Cowden, who is currently serving as a personnel advisor for the Giants, will likely be added to the Patriots’ personnel department in a non-GM capacity, though he believes Wolf will retain final authority.

Another situation worth monitoring will be whom Vrabel chooses as his offensive coordinator. Josh McDaniels, a familiar face for Patriots fans, has been named as an obvious choice, and the defensive-minded Vrabel will need to get that hire right in order to maximize the potential of young quarterback Drake Maye. Maye, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2024 draft, showed flashes as a rookie and is one of the reasons why the New England HC job was generally seen as a desirable one, and his continued development will be a top priority.

Indeed, as Reiss points out, Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson — one of the most respected offensive minds in the game — was New England’s second choice. If they had offered Johnson the job, and if Johnson had accepted, the Pats would have had an ideal coach-QB pairing, but unlike Vrabel, Johnson has never had to create his own team culture. Vrabel, on the other hand, does have that experience, and the Pats are banking on his ability to properly fill out his staff.

As our head coaching search tracker shows, Vrabel was connected to each of the six teams in need of a new HC this year, further underscoring the strength of his candidacy. Per Dianna Russini of The Athletic, the Bears and Jets made “consistent and late pushes” to land him, and Zack Rosenblatt of The Athletic believes New York had a real shot at him until the Patriots’ job became available. Meanwhile, Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network reports that, despite the Raiders‘ (and minority owner Tom Brady‘s) interest in Vrabel, Brady’s former teammate declined a Las Vegas interview because he knew he would be accepting the New England gig (video link).

Despite the Patriots’ 4-13 record in 2024, the presence of Maye, the hiring of Vrabel, and the prospect of the most salary cap space in the league will surely create plenty of excitement in New England in the coming months.

More On Jerod Mayo’s Firing: Succession Plan, Hiring Process, Stevenson Benching

The Patriots’ succession plan for Bill Belichick clearly didn’t go as planned, as Jerod Mayo was let go after only one ugly season at the helm. However, there were cracks in the organization’s overall plan before Robert Kraft even named Mayo as his head coach.

[RELATED: Patriots Fire Jerod Mayo]

According to Chad Graff of The Athletic, Kraft’s literal succession timeline intended for Mayo to take over in 2025. When Kraft instituted his plan in 2023, he planned to give Belichick two more seasons (allowing the coach to break the all-time wins record) before Mayo would take over the gig.

That obviously didn’t come to fruition, as Belichick’s fractured relationship with the Patriots led to his ouster after that 2023 campaign. Before that, Belichick failed to mentor his successor like the organization expected (Graff notes that Belichick cut off communication with a number of coaches during his final season in New England). So, when Mayo was suddenly thrust into the HC role, he didn’t have the prerequisite mentorship that ownership had hoped for.

That could partly explain Mayo’s unusual approach to his head coaching role. The newly-named head coach first struggled to fill his coaching staff, although he curiously avoided one solution by offering incumbent defensive play-caller Steve Belichick a demotion (which the younger Belichick refused, leading to him taking a DC job at Washington). Andrew Callahan and Doug Kyed of The Boston Herald report that some OC candidates were left unimpressed with Mayo’s approach during the interview process, leading to the team opting for their last interviewee in Alex Van Pelt.

Then, once the season began, Mayo reportedly struggled to discipline his players, and Graff passes along an anecdote where Mayo played cards with the players during a plane ride following a loss. Mayo also struggled with some of the seemingly simple tasks that are required from a head coach. For instance, The Boston Herald duo point to Rhamondre Stevenson‘s uncertain status in Week 17. Mayo intended to bench the RB for fumbling issues, and he communicated the lineup change to Van Pelt. The OC never relayed the message to running backs coach Taylor Embree, leading to Stevenson taking the field with the starting offense. Mayo later covered for his coordinator, but there were clear cracks in communication.

While Mayo has been the only Patriots leader to lose their job, executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf has also drawn his fair share of criticism. The front office leader took some accountability for the team’s disappointing 2024 showing while admitting that some of the Patriots’ younger players didn’t develop as expected (specifically WRs Ja’Lynn Polk and Javon Baker).

“I would say that I guess personally, what I was expecting is maybe a little bit more internal development, which is a good lesson certainly heading into next year. And that you can’t always rely on that,” Wolf said (via The Herald). “The rookie receivers didn’t have it really that much for us.”

Patriots To Retain Eliot Wolf, Front Office Staff

While the Patriots are set to revamp their coaching staff, it sounds like the front office will be staying intact. During his press conference today, owner Robert Kraft revealed that executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf and his staff will be sticking around for the 2025 campaign (via Doug Kyed of the Boston Herald). Wolf and top front office executive Alonzo Highsmith will also be involved in the team’s head coaching search (via Kyed).

As the Patriots navigated a post-Bill Belichick era, they chose Wolf as the leader of their new-look front office. The executive did have one major hit during his first year at the helm, with third-overall pick Drake Maye appearing to be a foundational piece. However, the front office drew criticism for the rest of their draft class, and Kraft acknowledged that the team needs stronger performances from rookie-contract players if they hope to return to contention.

“Our drafts have not been good for a while,” Kraft said (via Josh Alper of ProFootballTalk.com). “If you want to compete long term and be good in this league, you’ve got to have good drafts because those rookie contracts allow you to go out and get the people you need to surround people. It looks like we lucked out; we maybe have two quarterbacks. But I think we’ll hopefully see a big improvement this year.”

While the likes of Wolf and Highsmith are expected to keep their jobs, Albert Breer of SI.com expects there to still be significant changes to the front office operations. After Belichick was responsible for running so many aspects of the front office for years, the organization was left with an antiquated approach when the dust settled following the iconic coach’s ouster. Breer opines that the Krafts put the front office at a disadvantage by not providing the same resources as other NFL teams, with the writer suggesting that ownership could look to “add elements of analytics and sport science” to their operations.

While many of these subtle changes will take place behinds the scenes, the Patriots’ search for their next head coach will be very public. Ownership is expected to be heavily involved in the search, as are the aforementioned front office executives. Breer notes that the team isn’t expected to hire a search firm to assist in the process.

As we await word on the team’s interview process, we’ll starting to hear some details about Mayo’s sudden firing, with Tom E. Curran of NBCSports Boston noting that the final four games of the season played a significant role in the decision. Curran says the past month was “untenable,” and while the team didn’t initially anticipate moving on from their first-year head coach, the “disorganization became too much to take.”

Kraft himself told reporters that he went back and forth on the decision over the past month. Ultimately, the owner believed the squad showed regression throughout the 2024 campaign, with Kraft citing the season-opening win over the Bengals as the high point of the year. Kraft also revealed that Mayo didn’t know about his impending firing prior to the season finale; the head coach ended up guiding his squad to victory while also compromising the team’s chances at the first-overall pick (links via Kyed).

While a new head coach will presumably look to bring on their own staff, there’s still a chance a few key assistants stick around. Offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt didn’t get a whole lot of production from his unit in 2024, but the coach did earn praise for his handling of Maye’s development. If Van Pelt is ultimately canned by the Patriots, Breer believes the coach could land back in Cleveland, where he served as OC between 2020 and 2023.

Patriots HC Jerod Mayo Likely To Be Fired?

Just a few days ago, we heard that first-year Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo was likely to keep his job for the 2025 season. After all, he was owner Robert Kraft’s hand-picked successor to Bill Belichick, and he inherited a team that was clearly in the early stages of a rebuild, so it would be reasonable to give him some time to learn the ropes as a bench boss and to grow into the role as the club continues to try to improve the roster.

However, Jonathan Jones of CBS Sports writes that Mayo has a “weakening case” to be retained, and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk hears that “nerves are extremely frayed” among team staffers as they ponder Mayo’s Black Monday fate. Meanwhile, ESPN’s Adam Schefter also hears that there seems to have been a shift in organizational thinking over the last month (video link).

As such, Schefter believes that Mayo will be fired. He references fan anger and fan apathy in his report, and Doug Kyed of the Boston Herald notes that Gillette Stadium was only half-full for the team’s 40-7 drubbing at the hands of the Chargers last week, with multiple “fire Mayo” chants breaking out in the stands late in the game.

Fan reactions are presumably not factors that will motivate Kraft to move on from Mayo, but the nature of the Los Angeles loss, in which the team was outclassed in every facet, certainly could. That defeat was the latest in a string of six consecutive losses, and even late-December reports suggesting that Mayo would be safe included the caveat that a “collapse” over the final three games of the season could change things. While the club did put up a valiant effort in a 24-21 loss to the Bills – the AFC’s No. 2 seed – in Week 16, it is hard to describe a six- or seven-game losing streak to close out a season as anything other than a collapse.

Additionally, in contrast to prior reports that the Patriots’ locker room remained united despite the difficult season, some players have told Kyed that the team suffers from a poor culture and lack of leadership. Such discontent, in conjunction with some of Mayo’s public actions that Jones and/or Kyed have classified as “gaffes” – starting Jacoby Brissett in Week 1 despite admitting that Drake Maye had outplayed Brissett in the preseason, seemingly slighting OC Alex Van Pelt in a postgame presser, and telling a pregame radio show that RB Antonio Gibson would start over Rhamondre Stevenson in Week 17 before making a “coach’s decision” to start Stevenson less than an hour later – could certainly spell trouble for Mayo.

Underscoring all of this, of course, is the presence of franchise icon Mike Vrabel, who is one of the two most coveted coaching candidates in this year’s cycle and who is all but certain to get a head coaching job in the near future. If New England wants Vrabel – and if it does, the interest appears mutual – then now would be the time to make the move.

If Mayo is retained, he is expected to add more veteran coaches to his staff, per Jones. Meanwhile, Jones suggests that executive VP of player personnel Eliot Wolf will be retained, and that he could make further changes to the club’s staff. That presumably includes firing Van Pelt.

Wolf will have the No. 1 overall pick at his disposal in the 2025 draft if the Patriots fall to Buffalo in today’s season finale, which would give the team a 3-14 record.

No Timetable For Patriots QB Drake Maye To Enter Starting Lineup

The Patriots are hoping they found their QB of the future in third-overall pick Drake Maye. However, after signing veteran Jacoby Brissett as a seat-warmer, the organization isn’t in any rush to throw their rookie quarterback into the fire. While speaking with reporters, offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt said there’s no specific timetable to elevate Drake into the QB1 role.

“I think you have to take that as it comes,” Van Pelt said (via ESPN’s Mike Reiss). “There is no timetable. Jacoby, again, is our starter and he’s playing excellent football for us in the spring. And Drake is coming on. So until that changes, we’re going to stick with what we got.

“We always talk about earning your reps around here. So as he continues to grow and have successful practices and start stacking those, then we can think about moving him up the depth chart. It’s a process. It’s a marathon. We’re going to take our time and do it the right way.”

As the OC noted, there are still some skills that Maye has to develop before he can enter the starting lineup. While the rookie has quickly adapted to the team’s footwork requirements, he’s still a work in progress when it comes to “calling plays from the huddle.” While there is certainly enthusiasm for Maye’s inevitable ascension into the starting lineup, Van Pelt opines that this developmental time will only help the player’s long-term outlook.

“I think of it as a marathon over a sprint,” Van Pelt said. “You just don’t go out and run a marathon. You have to train properly for a marathon. It’s the same with a quarterback,” he said, when asked the key tenets of developing a rookie at the position.

“There’s a process. We follow that process. We trust that process. You can’t just stick a guy out there and expect him to be successful without the proper training. We’re making moves in the right direction.”

The coaching staff will naturally have a major say in Maye’s development, with Van Pelt and new head coach Jerod Mayo having significant influence over the decision. The OC revealed that the recently promoted Eliot Wolf, who is serving as New England’s executive vice president of player personnel, will also be involved with the decision.

Latest On Patriots’ Eliot Wolf Decision

The Patriots now officially have their top post-Bill Belichick pieces in place, naming Eliot Wolf their executive VP of player personnel nearly four months after hiring Jerod Mayo to replace the coaching legend on the sideline.

Filling these two jobs involved a historically low-volume search. After language in Mayo’s contract allowed the Patriots to work around the Rooney Rule — which mandates two external minority candidates be interviewed for HC positions — the team met with only two outside candidates for its de facto GM position. And the process leading to the Wolf hire proved to be a box-checking operation, as a few candidates around the league effectively predicted.

During search that saw three executives — the Bengals’ Trey Brown, the Bills’ Terrance Gray and former Cardinals staffer Quentin Harris — decline interviews, the Patriots met with Eagles scouting director Brandon Hunt and former Panthers exec Samir Suleiman. Neither interview took place at the team facility, according to SI.com’s Albert Breer, and the two candidates who agreed to interview did not meet with anyone beyond the Krafts.

Widely expected to end with Wolf being given the keys on a full-time basis, this Patriots search brought the combined total of outside candidates interviewed for the HC and GM jobs to two this offseason. By comparison, the Panthers met with 11 outside candidates for their HC post and eight non-Carolina-based staffers for their GM gig. The Chargers spoke with nine GM candidates and met with 13 outside coaches. The Commanders’ HC-GM search covered five GM aspirants and seven outside HC interviewees. The Raiders’ search most closely resembled the Patriots’, as they only met with two non-Antonio Pierce candidates for HC and five GM candidates.

The Pats, who have not given out a GM title in more than 30 years, gave Wolf a trial run by installing him as their acting personnel chief months before the draft, Breer adds. It would have been borderline shocking to see the team allow Wolf to select its hopeful long-term quarterback (No. 3 overall pick Drake Maye), turning down Giants and Vikings trade-up offers along the way, and then go with another candidate to lead the way post-draft. Most around the league correctly predicted New England would stick with Wolf, a longtime exec who had worked as the No. 2 man in Green Bay and Cleveland. Wolf later became a finalist for the Bears and Vikings’ GM jobs in 2022.

Wolf, 42, has changed the Patriots’ scouting system by replacing Belichick’s setup with what he used with the Packers; the Patriots will also switch up their workflow by having both Wolf and Mayo report to ownership. While this format can cause division, other teams have both their HC and GM meet directly with ownership rather than use a top-down approach.

Prior to Belichick’s exit, Matt Groh worked as his top lieutenant. The Patriots have employed Wolf since 2020, but the Krafts saw enough in the second-generation personnel man to vault him past Groh and into their top front office spot. Groh remains with the organization, but it will be Wolf — likely with more input from ownership compared to the Belichick era — leading the way.

Ownership did not conduct thorough searches to reach its Mayo-Wolf endpoint. That stands to be an important footnote as the team prepares for its first post-Belichick season.

Latest On Patriots’ Organizational Structure

During his lengthy tenure with the organization, Bill Belichick wielded enormous influence as head coach and de facto general manager of the Patriots. 2024 will mark the beginning of a notable transition both on the sidelines and in the front office.

Jerod Mayo succeeded Belichick as head coach, but New England briefly conducted a search for a new lead executive after the draft. To no surprise, that process produced only a shortlist of outside candidates willing to interview for the position before incumbent Eliot Wolf was given the title of EVP of player personnel. Wolf will control roster decisions and cap management among other GM-esque duties, but he will not have the autonomy Belichick previously enjoyed.

Prior to Wolf’s hire, Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated reported Mayo and New England’s next lead executive will both report to owner Robert Kraft. That marks a stark departure from the Belichick era, when he had free reign on staffing and roster-building moves with little input from Kraft. Tension between the two grew in recent seasons, though, as the organization’s inability to find a genuine Tom Brady successor became apparent.

Quarterback was an understandable priority ahead of this year’s draft, the first with Wolf at the helm. Kraft and the Patriots’ ownership wanted to exit the opening round with a rookie signal-caller, and new England turned down considerable interest from both the Giants and Vikings for the No. 3 pick. Retaining that selection cleared the way for Drake Maye to be drafted, and he is now positioned to operate as the team’s starter as early as 2024.

Needless to say, how Maye fares during the years to come will be a central factor in determining Mayo and Wolf’s job security. It will be interesting to see how the new setup plays out with Kraft again being a central figure in key organizational decisions as the other two kick off their first career seasons in their respective positions. As New England looks to rebound from a 4-13 campaign in 2024, the team will simultaneously try out a new structure with respect to operations.

Patriots Name Eliot Wolf As Top Personnel Executive

The writing’s been on the wall for some time now, but the long-rumored favorite to take over lead front office duties in New England, vacated during the exit of former head coach Bill Belichick, will officially be taking the job.

Tom Pelissero of NFL Network was the first to report that director of scouting Eliot Wolf, who had been acting this offseason as de facto general manager of the Patriots since Belichick’s departure, has officially been named the team’s executive vice president of player personnel.

The news may seem a bit underwhelming giving the lack of a “general manager” title, but it appears that Wolf’s promotion is essentially the Patriots’ action to fill that general manager role. New England has long been without an official general manager after owner Robert Kraft hired Belichick as head coach and name him “de facto” general manager, as well. That trend appears set to continue, according to Pelissero, as the team still won’t have a general manager in title.

That doesn’t lessen the importance of Wolf’s new position, though. Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Wolf will oversee the overall direction of the player personnel department, will oversee management of the salary cap, and will be in control of the team’s 53-man active roster, all roles that are generally filled by a team’s general manager.

At 42 years old, Wolf has been in working in the NFL for 20 years. He first broke into the league as a pro personnel assistant with the Packers in 2004 before being promoted to assistant director of pro personnel in 2008 and assistant director of player personnel in 2011. A year later, Wolf was elevated to director of pro personnel before receiving promotions to director of player personnel in 2015 and director of football operations in 2016.

After two seasons in that role and 13 years in Green Bay, Wolf spent two years as the assistant general manager for the Browns under then-general manager John Dorsey. When Dorsey and the Browns parted ways, Wolf joined the Patriots in 2020 as a scouting consultant. For the last two years, Wolf has served as New England’s director of scouting. Wolf may not have been around for the era of the Patriots’ dynasty, but he does hold a Super Bowl ring from his time in Green Bay that saw seven NFC North titles and 10 playoff appearances.

Together with newly promoted head coach Jerod Mayo, Wolf helps to form a new, young top two under Kraft. Several years removed from the reign of Tom Brady and now without Belichick, it will be up to Mayo and Wolf to bring in a new era of success in New England.

2024 NFL General Manager Search Tracker

With the Patriots hiring Eliot Wolf as their de facto GM after having moved on from Bill Belichick, all five teams in need of a GM have filled their post this offseason. If other teams decide to make GM changes, they’ll be added to this list.

Updated 5-11-24 (4:35pm CT)

Carolina Panthers

Las Vegas Raiders

Los Angeles Chargers

New England Patriots

Washington Commanders