Three Things That Need To Change For Mike Vrabel’s Patriots

The New England Patriots haven’t changed very much during their first few weeks under Mike Vrabel.

I don’t think the new guy would like to hear this, but the fact remains that things continue to look just like like they did during the organization’s last few seasons under Bill Belichick and Jerod Mayo.

The Patriots have been competitive throughout their first three contests, sure, but the organization is staring its fifth consecutive 1-2 start in the face after sandwiching their lone victory (Week 2 against the Miami Dolphins) between a pair of home losses (Week 1 against the Las Vegas Raiders and Week 3 against the Pittsburgh Steelers).

I’ve provided key takeaways from each game, but there are three common themes that keep popping up — and they need to be addressed.

GET THE GUY ON THE GROUND

I didn’t want to start this thing off by oversimplifying things, but the fact of the matter is that fundamentals have taken a back seat during the early portion of this regime change.

Vrabel’s squad has 39 missed tackles in 2025 — which includes their second worst performance in terms of missed-tackle rate (23.3%) since that statistic started being tracked by NextGenStats in 2016.

Mayo’s squad, for all of its faults, was remarkably efficient in getting the ball carrier to the ground — finishing with the seven-fewest whiffs in 2024.

The Patriots are obviously running a completely different defensive system that has introduced major turnover, but it’s hard to emphasize other areas of improvement for what has been a middle-of-the-road unit when they can’t do the most basic thing in the sport. Vrabel’s guys are swarming, but there have been too many examples of explosive plays coming off the back of missed tackles — Jakobi Meyers’ chains-moving catch-and-run in Week 1, Malik Washington’s punt return touchdown and Davon Achane’s near-go-ahead score in Week 2, and basically everything Jaylen Warren did in Week 3.

FOLLOW THE RULES

The Patriots have the third-most accepted penalties (28) in the entire NFL, trailing just the New Orleans Saints and Tennessee Titans (31) and the Minnesota Vikings (29).

I don’t know how that latter team has done it, but you can take a quick look at those three other teams mentioned and realize that getting penalized isn’t something that winning teams do — as NE, NO and TEN are a combined 1-8.

New England hasn’t even been victim to what were once described as “dog-fight penalties” — which are your holdings and roughings.

It’s been the procedural stuff that has killed them, alongside a few poorly-timed defensive pass interference called that you’d hope will be mitigated with the return of Christian Gonzalez. The Patriots were called for these penalties in these situations during their matchup with the Steelers:

• (8:32 — 1st) Alex Austin was flagged for defensive pass interference on third down in the end zone, leading to a touchdown on the very next play.
• (3:51 — 1st) Austin was then called for holding on third down, which was a play that resulted in a sack and would have forced a punt.
• (3:22 — 1st) Marcus Jones received an unnecessary roughness penalty for going low on a blocker — though it looked like he was making a play on the ball.
• (2:13 — 2nd) Mike Onwenu wander too far down the field and was penalized, erasing a 17-yard completion to DeMario Douglas.
• (13:30 — 4th) Carlton Davis was called for defensive pass interference on third down, though the ball was uncatchable.

Bad luck? Bad coaching? Poor attention to detail? It doesn’t matter, that stuff needs to be fixed.

RUNNING GAME RESET

Rhamondre Stevenson, TreVeyon Henderson and Antonio Gibson have combined for more fumbles (three) than touchdown runs (zero) and sit second, third, and fourth, respectively, on the club’s rushing leaderboard.

Yes, that’s right, Drake Maye actually leads this team in rushing yards (87).

The Patriots won’t be able to survive with that being the case, but they’re also stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to Stevenson and Gibson following their disastrous series of fumbles in Week 3.

It’s a good thing they won’t need to feature them in Week 4 against the Carolina Panthers!

Henderson should be given every opportunity to take the top spot in that running back rotation moving forward, with this week being a perfect start with Carolina ranking near the bottom of the league in rushing yards allowed per attempt (30th; 5.4) and rushing yards allowed per game (25th: 137.7).

New England not only needs to make an example out of the two veterans, but needs to start featuring perhaps its most talented skill player.

Vrabel can find himself back into good standing with those fixes, and should be doing everything in his power to make them.