FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — On Day 1, Mike Vrabel stepped to his first New England Patriots podium with a steel blue suit on his shoulders and a titanium standard on his mind.
Win the AFC East.
Host playoff games (plural) at Gillette Stadium.
Compete for championships.
"I want to galvanize our football team," he said last January, following owner Robert Kraft's introduction of Vrabel as the Patriots' head coach. "I want to galvanize this building. I want to galvanize our fans."
As declarations go, it was the kind of message that wins the first press conference and injects oxygen into the lungs of ownership. At best, Vrabel was delivering a rallying cry that he actually believed. But at worst — well, this was a franchise coming off the misery of consecutive 4-13 seasons. Bill Belichick was gone and soured. Tom Brady was free to find his next horizon. Everyone knew what the worst felt like. They were living it. And getting out might as well have been billed as the Boston area's next Big Dig: a project that would surely be marked by years … maybe decades … maybe generations. After all, that's how long it took for the Patriots to position themselves for their first Super Bowl win.
Yet there was Vrabel on Sunday night — 363 days into this job — smiling through a busted lip that was absorbed during a fit of joy from Patriots defensive tackle Milton Williams, who accidentally head-butted his head coach during a bear hug during New England's16-3 win wild-card playoff win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
"We talked to them about being willing to spill some blood out there, that the big dogs come out in January," Vrabel said Sunday. "I think Milt took that to heart in the way that he played the game — in the way he finished the game. He came over and got me pretty good. That's what happens."
Milton Williams celebrated his game-clinching sack by making Mike Vrabel bleedpic.twitter.com/PNNconP5YT
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland)January 12, 2026
And who could blame Williams? It was a victory that established at least a few things about these Patriots that should matter. Something along the lines of...
Even on a lagging day offensively, New England can lean on defense to beat the brakes off a playoff-minted opponent. This is a hallmark of teams that have a legitimate Super Bowl shot.
We can stop talking about the Patriots' 14-3 regular season record as if it was nothing more than vulture-feasting on mediocrity. Beating your schedule is beating your schedule — and whatever measure of respect that you earn along the way should include the postseason.
And finally, when Vrabel laid down what he wanted the New England standard to be last January, it wasn't just talk or parroting what every coach says on their first day. It also wasn't just achievable on some distant horizon.
Consider that in less than one calendar year Vrabel ticked off two of his three never-ending goals in New England. He won the AFC East on Day 349. And on Sunday, Day 363, the Patriots beat the Chargers and guaranteed a second home playoff game in the divisional round against either the Pittsburgh Steelers or Houston Texans. That puts the Patriots two wins from playing for a championship among an AFC playoff field where every single team has some kind of Achilles' heel.
This is how you galvanize a team, a building and a fan base: You say what you're about, and then you be about it.
That's what New England did Sunday. A day when quarterback Drake Maye had several good moments stitched around a pair of turnovers and five sacks. When the running game wasn't explosive — but was strong and consistent enough to wear down a talented and violent Chargers defense. And when the Patriots' own defense battered Los Angeles quarterback Justin Herbert with six sacks and enough hard hits to actually wonder if Herbert would make it out of Sunday without serious injury.
As Patriots wideout Stefon Diggs framed it Sunday through raised eyebrows: "I don't know how many yards [the Chargers] had, but our defense looks like they're back in rare form."
For the record, the Chargers had only 207 total yards. And New England also limited them to 1-of-10 on third down and 1-of-3 on fourth down.
"[The defense] probably got tired of hearing me talk about [the Chargers] being fourth in the league in third down and what they were able to do as an offense," Vrabel mused.
Even with the two turnovers from Maye, it was easy to see that Vrabel was encouraged by what he saw from his defense, as well as the play-calling of inside linebackers coach Zak Kuhr, who became the team's de-facto defensive coordinator early this season in the midst of Terrell Williams' battle with prostate cancer. It was Kuhr that Vrabel credited with dialing up different looks on Sunday that repeatedly rattled or hammered Herbert with pressure.
"Zak was able to change up some calls there at the end and I felt like that mixed the pressure in, because that's what we felt like we needed," Vrabel said.
Few will recall it from his introductory press conference, but in a way, Vrabel foreshadowed Kuhr's expanding role and performance. He teased the MVP-level strides of Maye and the veteran contributions from Diggs and running back Rhamondre Stevenson and a vast litany of depth and role players — whether rookies or journeymen. Not by actually predicting them, but by simply stating what the mentality of this Patriots team would be from inside out.
Leaders wouldn't be built. They would be discovered.
"We're going to have leaders," Vrabel predicted back in January. "Leaders are going to identify themselves. I know that our staff and our ability to create winners and competitors [is] probably easier than it is to create leaders — and the leaders are going to identify themselves. The leaders are going to be the ones that define the culture. The culture will be what drives and gives you the results that we're all after."
"We just want to be good enough to take advantage of bad football," Vrabel said. "That's where we're going to start. That's what I've tried to tell all the players is [the situation] right now. I don't know if we're good enough to take advantage of bad football. I'm not sure. … But if we can just work towards taking advantage of bad football and being good enough to — when somebody makes a mistake — capitalizing on it and not being the ones that make the mistakes, focusing on the little things and the details and helping them do their job better, that's a great place to start."
That's where it started. Sunday is where it continued. From taking advantage of bad football to forcing it.
And along the way, ticking off the goals that seemed a little more distant than they've turned out to be.
