INDIANAPOLIS — It had been 192 days since Eliot Wolf last stepped behind a microphone.
In that time, his team lost 13 games. His roster crumbled. His head coach got fired.
On Wednesday afternoon, Wolf finally took responsibility for those failures with an opening statement split between a hopeful future and painful past.
“Ultimately, (I) just didn’t do enough to improve the roster to get it to where we need it to be,” he said at the NFL Scouting Combine.
Because blame beats unemployment, jumping in front of a blame train nonetheless marked a good day for the Patriots’ personnel head. Wolf can speak at the combine because even after another disastrous season he’s still the head of an NFL front office. And according to Wolf, he’s maintained control over the 53-man roster.
Of course, the Patriots being the Patriots, it’s not that simple.
Asked Tuesday who has roster control, Mike Vrabel did not name Wolf in his answer. He said only that he accepted the Patriots’ head-coaching job because he felt comfortable about the influence he would have on the roster, and conversations were ongoing between himself, the personnel department, the coaches and, curiously, new vice president of football operations and strategy John Streicher.
Of that group, Wolf has hand-picked one person: senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith. His new No. 2, Ryan Cowden, is an ex-Titans executive and Vrabel confidant from their time in Tennessee. Streicher is a Vrabel loyalist with no known front-office experience. Vrabel also assembled the coaching staff, a group loyal to him, while Wolf inherited most of his personnel staffers from Bill Belichick.
Wolf admits he failed in his first season as de facto GM. Ahead of his second season, he is surrounded by people who have arrived because of that failure. He did not select his right-hand man, Cowden, and has indicated he won’t force players upon the coaching staff.
Does that sound like a person in charge to you?
So this offseason, while the Patriots bask in this honeymoon period at the start of the Vrabel era, swimming in cap space and draft capital and hope, remember every beginning has an end. For Wolf, that could come sooner than later.
Because this offseason, he must deliver. For the franchise, for himself. Wolf must generate fresh value beyond whatever positive impression he’s made on Vrabel privately because this is a curious setup at best; a potential successor in Cowden, with the ear of the most powerful person in the organization, waiting behind him.
For whatever it’s worth, Wolf did not travel with Cowden to Indianapolis, as he did with Highsmith and director of player personnel Matt Groh. But at the Senior Bowl, Cowden accompanied Vrabel constantly, and here in Indianapolis it’s been Streicher at his side for significant stretches.
During his combine media tour Tuesday, Vrabel repeatedly spoke about the Patriots’ rebuild with real urgency.
‘We have to improve.”
“We need to strengthen the roster.”
That’s a mandate, not a wish. So if the Patriots’ upcoming free-agent signings fail or their draft picks bust, it won’t be Vrabel’s head rolling. Nor Cowden’s. It will be Wolf’s, and Wolf’s alone.
Last year, the Krafts granted him personnel power and allowed Wolf to rebuild the Patriots on a faux audition basis. Free agency came and went, the draft came and went, and then in mid-May, the Krafts held a sham GM search that landed on their lone candidate all along.
This year, the audition feels real. Wolf got his mulligan. He may have ownership’s approval and the respect of several current and former GMs who remark about his near photographic scouting memory. But none of that will matter if he – and by extension the Patriots – fail this offseason.
One final nugget: League sources have offered mixed reviews on Cowden.
As Wolf mentioned Wednesday, Cowden has been described as a smart executive with great conviction in his evaluations. Rumblings out of Tennessee hinted at some palace intrigue when his former boss, ex-Titans GM Jon Robinson, got fired in December 2022. Cowden replaced Robinson for the remainder of that season, but ultimately did not land the full-time general manager job weeks later.
Vrabel got canned the following season, and reportedly planned to have Cowden lead his front office whenever he landed a new head-coaching job. Now, he’s agreed to work with Wolf but insisted Cowden accompany him to New England, where the head of the personnel department must watch his back while walking into an offseason with little margin for error.
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