Mike Vrabel’s midseason visit to Foxborough apparently didn’t sit well with Tennessee Titans brass before he was fired as their head coach Tuesday after six seasons and back-to-back losing campaigns.
Vrabel “raised some eyebrows” in the Titans’ organization when he spent their bye week at the Patriots-Bills game on Oct. 22 to be inducted into New England’s Hall of Fame, and praised his former team in his speech at Gillette Stadium, according to The Athletic’s Diana Russini and Joe Rexrode.
That reportedly contributed to Vrabel’s stunning firing.
The former linebacker won three Super Bowls in eight seasons with New England, and looked pretty comfortable with team owner Robert Kraft, who gave him the VIP treatment at the game, a 29-25 Patriots win.
“I don’t want you to take this organization for granted,” Vrabel, 48, said during his halftime ceremony speech. “I’ve been a lot of places, this is a special place with great leadership, great fans, great direction, and great coaching. Enjoy it. It’s not like this everywhere.”
Vrabel was later asked if his comments were directed at the Titans organization.
“(The Patriots) have won six Super Bowls in 20 years, that’s what I was alluding to,” he said. “I don’t know what to tell you. It’s just a lot of success. … The amount of success that they had there, the whole message was, just for myself and the former players and everything, just to not take things for granted.”
Vrabel’s Patriots reunion reportedly didn’t sit well with Titans owner, Amy Adams Strunk, but the two never spoke of it and “she let it fester.”
The Boston Globe then reported in November that Kraft considered Vrabel his “home run choice” to succeed Bill Belichick — who the Patriots parted ways with Thursday after a dismal 4-13 season.
On Wednesday, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that Strunk’s decision to fire Vrabel included another twist.
“This was Amy Adams Strunk making the decision based on a lot of things, including what happened when he went to New England for the Hall of Fame thing — including not dispelling rumors in house that he was going to be the Patriots coach,” Rapoport said.
A combination of “poor communication, misinterpreted statements and misunderstandings” led to Vrabel’s firing, according to The Athletic, which spoke with “nearly a dozen prominent people inside and outside the organization on the condition of anonymity.”
The communication between Vrabel and Strunk reportedly worsened over time.
“High-level Titans sources told ‘The Athletic’ in November that the team’s long-term plan was to retain Vrabel as coach,” Russini and Rexrode wrote.
“After Vrabel’s firing, a team source said that was true then because Strunk strongly believed in Vrabel at the time — and because she wanted Vrabel to have a clear understanding of how she felt about him and how badly she wanted him to be the coach for years to come. Strunk did not get the sense that Vrabel felt the same way, and the communication between them got worse from there.”
The Titans ended the regular season with a 28-20 win against the Jaguars on Sunday, which eliminated Jacksonville from the playoffs.
Vrabel, who took over as head coach of the Titans in 2018, also said in his speech that he will try to recreate the Patriot way wherever he takes his talents.
“Wherever I coach and now it’s in Tennessee, obviously. But I’m trying to recreate what we had in that locker room,” he said of his time in New England from 2001-08. “And I don’t know if we’ll get it, but we’re going to try every day. I’m going to try because nothing was more important than the team.”
Things should be interesting in the offseason now that there is a head coach vacancy in Foxborough and Vrabel is considered one of the top choices.
The Patriots parted ways with Belichick after 24 seasons and an unmatched partnership that included six Super Bowl titles in nine appearances with retired quarterback Tom Brady.