Head Coach Mike Vrabel on WEEI 11/24: "There's no secret formula, our fundamentals have to improve"

Greg Hill (0:00)

Good morning, Coach.

Mike Vrabel (0:00)

Good morning.

Greg Hill (0:01)

Victory Monday, so shot, how many in a row, nine wins in a row, but how many weeks we've been doing shots?

Courtney Cronin (0:08)

I think we've done all of them, too.

Mike Vrabel (0:09)

Quite a while.

Greg Hill (0:09)

Hasn't been a while. Cheers, cheers, cheers. Cheers. Congratulations. It's very good.

That is the immunity shot.

Courtney Cronin (0:21)

That one had more kick.

Mike Vrabel (0:22)

No OJ, no straw.

Greg Hill (0:25)

Ginger and lemon from Pure Green, and that is the coach's go-to right there. That is good. Tough to win on the road, and you guys are perfect on the road this season. So congrats on that.

Mike Vrabel (0:37)

We'll appreciate it.

Go down 10-0. So proud of the way that they battled back, and then there's always going to be some adversity, which I thought we stood up to. I had a big drive there at the fourth, in the fourth there to have to kick a field goal away, and he made a big kick to make it a six-point game to where they needed a touchdown, and we got the drive stop. So there's a lot of positives, a lot of things to improve on, but in the end, I felt like we were able to find a way and not be at our best, but also make the plays when we had to.

Greg Hill (1:14)

Drake May has been almost perfect.

Mike Vrabel (1:16)

Drake May May?

Greg Hill (1:18)

Where do you stand on that?

Mike Vrabel (1:19)

I'm not really sure. I just heard about it 10 seconds ago.

Greg Hill (1:21)

Yeah.

Courtney Cronin (1:22)

Terrible.

Greg Hill (1:24)

I think the old, those of us...

Mike Vrabel (1:27)

I couldn't even figure out 6'7, and now it's Drake, Drake, Drake.

Courtney Cronin (1:30)

Right, I know.

Greg Hill (1:30)

Yeah, I don't know.

Courtney Cronin (1:31)

I like Draco.

Greg Hill (1:32)

Yeah.

Mike Vrabel (1:33)

I don't like that either, Gordon. Keep going.

Courtney Cronin (1:35)

Harry Potter?

Mike Vrabel (1:36)

I've never seen it.

Greg Hill (1:37)

Never seen Harry Potter?

Mike Vrabel (1:39)

I thought about waiting in the line one time, at Universal for two hours, and then I went to the bar.

Greg Hill (1:45)

What do you call him?

Mike Vrabel (1:47)

Drake.

Greg Hill (1:47)

Drake. Does he call you Vrabes, or does he call you Coach?

Mike Vrabel (1:53)

Coach, I think.

Greg Hill (1:54)

Coach, yeah. Well, Pop Dog Lisk said they call him Draco, and I prefer that, but we're old. But anyway, hard to nitpick on him, but a little bit of a slow start for him yesterday.

Mike Vrabel (2:07)

Well, I mean, I think that, again, just settling in and making sure that everybody's, I guess, just in tune and getting the drive started. I think to me, whether it's the slow start or just getting the drive start, I think you can see the difference that when we can get into a drive, we get the first first down, we can kind of get a rhythm to what we're doing. And obviously, that starts with the quarterback, but then there's all these different supporting casts that have to be good for this thing to work. So again, that's what I see is you just have to get in the drive. We have to be able to get in the first first down and get moving and then think, send and start clicking.

SPEAKER_4 (2:49)

Mike, you've been around football a long time and you see these wins and you go, that was a great win, that was an ugly win. And you look at yesterday's game and it's one of those wins where I kind of look at it, like it's one of those ugly wins. You learn a lot, you play a tough road opponent. What do you kind of like message for some of these guys afterwards? Like, hey, you're able to come away with that, but we need to clean up this, this.

Mike Vrabel (3:13)

Well, the coaching probably right after the game is not really, I mean, I don't think they're here a whole lot of what I'm saying. So just the emphasis of we're gonna need everybody. And we saw that today. We saw that yesterday with the injuries that we had and the moving parts and the things that go and sometimes things happen fast and you have to be ready for your opportunity. And you don't wanna let those pass by and the ability to help your team win when guys are going down. I mean, we were shifting different positions. We're out of personnel groups or in other personnel groups. We got five different company. I don't think we've I don't think any teams use as many as you know, we've had probably 18 guys on the field goal protection unit yesterday.