John ‘Stretch’ Streicher and Ekene Olekanma both joined the Patriots this offseason.
The New England Patriots are far from finalizing their roster for the 2025 NFL season, and it seems the same is true for their staff. Just recently, the club hired brought former San Francisco 49ers analyst Ekene Olekanma aboard as director of coaching analytics.
On Tuesday, leading up to the Patriots’ final practice of mandatory minicamp, head coach Mike Vrabel gave some insight into the hire. Along the way also shed more light on the role another member of his support staff — VP of football operations and strategy John “Stretch” Streicher — will play this year.
Vrabel, after all, revealed that Streicher, and not Olekanma, will be in his ear on game day to give analytical opinion.
“That’s a pretty proven system,” Vrabel said about his cooperation with Streicher, “but I would say that [Olekanma] would be involved. That would be one area that he would help us, help me and Stretch specifically outside of the game planning, the self-scout, the opponent’s pre-advanced report or anything that they may do.
“We’d carve out some time for him, me and Stretch, based on who we’re playing, how aggressive we need to be, what are the field conditions, what is the wind, what are the game conditions. That would all be part of what he would do, but I would imagine that the communication would still stay between Stretch and I. Not that he wouldn’t communicate with him throughout the game.”
Vrabel and Streicher first crossed paths at Ohio State in 2011, and later reconnected with the Tennessee Titans in 2018. The former hired the latter to effectively serve as his right-hand man — the Ernie Adams to his Bill Belichick, if you will, even though Vrabel himself refrained from making the comparison earlier this year.
Still, it is clear that Streicher will play an important role for the Patriots and their new head coach moving forward. The same appears to be true for Olekanma as well, albeit in a less pronounced fashion.
The former Toledo linebacker, who studied bioengineering and biomedical engineering and later added a master’s degree in data science, got his start in the NFL with the Baltimore Ravens in 2021. A year later, he moved to San Francisco where he spent three seasons working in football research and development — focusing on a wide range of analytical tasks including self-scouting and opponent research.
“He did a fantastic job in his interview process and meeting with all the different groups that we feel like he’s going to be able to work with,” Vrabel said about Olekanma.
“He played football. Not that that’s a prerequisite, but you have to have the ability to not only take these numbers and pull them out of wherever they pull them out of. I’m not going to pretend that I know, but also have some application to it and be able to explain it to the coaches and say, ‘How much is too much, probably need more.’ However we can make our jobs more efficient and better is something that I’m excited about. We’re all excited about him.”
Vrabel added that the Patriots would not be done adding to their support staff, saying that the team would “add a couple other people there.” At the moment, the analytics team working under him is headlined by Streicher and Olekanma as well as research director Richard Miller and director of football strategy Marshall Oium.