New Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel will be rounding out his staff in the coming days and weeks and while the offensive side of the ball gets all the buzz thanks to the importance of quarterback Drake Maye’s development, the defense should provide just as much intrigue.
It’s fair to wonder which direction the defense will go under Vrabel after a bottom-out year in 2024 in which the Patriots defense finished 30th in FTN Network’s overall DVOA, 28th in rushing DVOA, 29th in passing DVOA, 27th on third down, 30th in pressure rate and 30th in EPA.
Vrabel was long considered a coach on the field for Bill Belichick but never actually coached under Belichick. However, his direct coaching mentors include Romeo Crennel and Dean Pees, two established branches of Belichick’s coaching tree who both spent significant years coordinating his defense in the NFL.
Through Crennel and Pees, Vrabel’s schematic roots connect back to the Fairbanks-Bullough 3-4 defense that was brought to the NFL in New England in the late 1970s and served as the basis for Belichick’s defense in New England, though it went through plenty of evolution over his 20-plus years with the Patriots.
There’s also Vrabel’s six years in Tennessee to consider, with Pees serving as his DC for the first two years and current Giants DC Shane Bowen ascending to the role until 2023. Those defenses relied on a fairly even split between man and zone coverage and a four-man pass rush. Each of the Titans defenses from 2021-2023 ranked in the bottom five of the league in blitz rate.
Bowen coordinated the Giants defense last season and upped his man coverage rate from what he ran in Tennessee. Cornerback personnel was an issue for the Titans and those defenses shared similarities to the more zone-heavy calls of the mid-2000s Patriots, before their defense began to major heavily in man coverage around 2012.
This past season the Patriots ran man defense at the second-highest rate in…
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