As a former player, coach Mike Vrabel always had connections to the New England Patriots organization, and that was probably enough to get him a coaching job with the team earlier.
However, he felt a need to leave New England and build his own path to an eventual head coaching job. Who would have ever thought that path would lead him back to the same place where he won three Super Bowls?
“It was important for me to go somewhere else, to start another coaching journey,” Vrabel told media members. “The opportunity at one point probably presented itself to be here coaching, but I felt like it was important to forge my own path somewhere else, and if those experiences led me back here at the right time and the right opportunity, then that was going to be what was meant to be.”
Vrabel made his own path by first serving as a linebackers coach for Ohio State in 2011. He also worked as a defensive line coach for that program in 2012 and 2013 before taking his talents to to NFL, where he worked under Bill O’Brien with the Texans as the linebackers coach and defensive coordinator.
That opened the doors to his first head coaching job with the Tennessee Titans which spanned from 2018-2023.
It is often mistaken that Vrabel comes from the Bill Belichick coaching tree, but in reality, he never coached under Belichick. That fact alone makes him one of the more intriguing coaching hires in recent memory.