Latest news with #PatriotWay
USA Today
24-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Re-grading the Lions 2021 NFL Draft class now that their rookie deals are done
Re-grading the Lions 2021 NFL Draft class now that their rookie deals are done Back in 2021, the new Detroit Lions regime of GM Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell was a wildly unknown commodity. Fans didn't know what to expect from the new-look Lions other than to hope it would be nothing like the previous "Patriot Way" path to the bottom. Little did anyone know that the first NFL draft class of the Holmes/Campbell era would be the foundation of a perennial playoff team and two-time NFC North champion, one that is favored to win a third straight division title in 2025. That first group of draftees in Detroit has now all moved beyond the rookie contracts, which makes it a good time to grade how well the Lions draft class of 2021 looks in retrospect. From their contributions in Detroit to the value of their second NFL contracts, the first Holmes draft class has left quite a mark on not just the Lions but the league as a whole... First round: Penei Sewell The No. 7 overall pick in the draft, Sewell quickly proved to be a standout at right tackle. Now he's a two-time first-team All-Pro and generally regarded as the best young offensive lineman in the game. Oh yeah, the former Oregon Duck is not even 25 years old yet. Second contract: 4 years, $112 million Second round: Levi Onwuzurike Taken at No. 41 overall out of Washington, Onwuzurike emerged as a part-time player as a rookie along the Lions defensive line. A back injury slowed his progress as a rookie and then wiped out his second year. He's admirably fought back from spinal fusion surgery to earn a second contract from Detroit as a versatile, useful reserve defensive lineman with 3.5 sacks in his four years. Second contract: 1 year, $4 million Third round: Alim McNeill Taken at No. 72 overall from North Carolina State, McNeill earned a starting DT gig early in his rookie season. He broke out in 2022 after reshaping his body and has emerged as one of the NFL's better interior pass rushers since. A knee injury ended his 2024 campaign early, but McNeill appeared headed for his first Pro Bowl berth prior to that. He just turned 25 and has 11.5 sacks, 23.5 TFLs and 147 total tackles in 61 career games. Second contract: 4 years, $97 million Third round: Ifeatu Melifonwu A cornerback at Syracuse, the Lions quickly switched the No. 101 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft into a safety. Injuries have dogged Melifonwu throughout his career, limiting him to just 37 games and 14 starts. Other than a torrid finish to the 2023 season, he's struggled to make an impact. Second contract: 1 year, $3.01 million with the Miami Dolphins Fourth round: Amon-Ra St. Brown The No. 112 pick in the draft blew away his draft position from the get-go. After a 90-catch rookie season that netted 912 yards and five TDs, St. Brown has spent the next three seasons hauling in at least 106 catches and 1,150 yards every year. Two-time first-team All-Pro, and no player has more catches since 2021 than St. Brown's 430. Second contract: 4 years, $120.01 million Fourth round: Derrick Barnes Selected one pick after St. Brown, Barnes continued a transition started in his final collegiate season at Purdue from hand-in-dirt pass rusher to an off-ball LB role in Detroit. After two up-and-down seasons, Barnes moved to the starting SAM LB role in his third season and found his niche with 81 tackles. An injury in Week 3 ended his 2024 season far too soon. Second contract: 3 years, $24 million Seventh round: Jermar Jefferson The running back from Oregon State was the No. 257 pick in the draft. He managed 15 carries for 74 yards and two TDs as a rookie reserve, his only NFL action to date. Struggles in pass protection and an inability to make a dent on special teams have limited his chances as a reserve RB. Currently a free agent.
Boston Globe
22-05-2025
- Sport
- Boston Globe
In Vrabel They Trust: With new head coach, Patriots' long search for a new identity is finally over
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The coaching Kool-Aid that got tossed out at the end of Belichick's tenure and lacked essential ingredients during the one-year coaching tenure of another former Patriots linebacker, Jerod Mayo, is now being consumed by the vat for Vrabel. Advertisement 'We love playing for Vrabel so far, great energy,' said All-Pro cornerback Christian Gonzalez. 'Everything you see on TV, that's exactly what you get. He puts on a little 51 jersey, which is, I thought, something he did in the past, but you know he still does it. But his energy, he always has great energy, always smiling, so I've enjoyed it.' After back-to-back 4-13 seasons, the Patriots are amen-ing to Vrabel's gospel. It's evident with the alacrity, upbeat energy, competition, and occasional jawing displayed in their first OTA practice open to the media. Advertisement 'I can tell like the guys who have been here it's a different mentality, you know,' said wide receiver DeMario Douglas. 'I feel like everybody's working super hard, and I feel like they're tired of losing, too. 'You can see it when we were working out, man. We're competing. We're competing in workouts, like conditioning drills. That's rare to see … and as we compete we're getting better, each [position] room.' The Vrabel vibes are real. Whether they translate to more victories remains to be seen. This team is still facing an uphill climb much steeper than the famous conditioning hill (Mount Belichick) behind their upper practice field that they didn't use Tuesday. But buy-in is a vital first step for any new coach. The former Titans coach has that in spades. He also has his team's respect from his playing pedigree. Perhaps no one embodied the do-it-all, do-whatever-it-takes ethos of the Patriots' dynasty better than Vrabel. He won three rings here playing outside linebacker, inside linebacker, and on special teams while moonlighting as a red-zone tight end on offense. Related : 'I think that just out of pure respect for what he did in this league for a long time, obviously, I respect it,' said tight end Hunter Henry. 'I think all the guys in the building respect the way he approached the game, his career, the success that he had, and just the way he played the game the right way.' Vrabel is entwined with the Patriots' glorious past, but he's not going to bask in it. The organization needed to cut the umbilical cord with its six Super Bowl-winning bearing and accept the reality of its current state. Both Belichick and Mayo struggled to do that. Advertisement Vrabel knows the Patriot Way isn't the only way, and that winning is more about people than some fabled management philosophy to be peddled to corporate CEOs. The Patriots are being reborn and retooled in Vrabel's image, one that generated football coaching success outside the Foxborough fold. The undercurrent of entitlement tied to the championship era is gone. Vrabel engaged in a culture cleanse this offseason. Only two of the Veteran leaders and team stalwarts David Andrews, Bentley, and Joe Cardona (released), as well as Jonathan Jones and Deatrich Wise (allowed to depart via free agency) are all gone. Influential and outspoken locker room voice Davon Godchaux was traded to the Saints. None of those players are bad guys or malcontents, but The Patriots no longer feel like they're trying to renovate a deteriorating old manse while still living in it. They're building something brand new. 'Oh, man, the culture is different here. I love it,' said Douglas. 'Vrabel is a players' coach, and he's on the field with us. We got a head coach that is on the field with us, man. It's different. He's very in tune to what we're doing, and wants us to be better.' Advertisement It's a little telling, unfortunately, that Douglas seems to have forgotten that the prior head coach was a former player, too. But Vrabel is omnipresent at practice, offering input, putting his stamp on the team. 'We love when the head coach is on the field, and he knows both sides. He knows what's going on on offense and what's going on on defense, and what needs to be done,' Douglas said. 'He's making sure that we're all on one accord, and we're all doing what we need to do.' Vrabel wields the rare ability to be just one of the guys and The Boss at the same time. 'He has been a lot of fun, a lot of fun in the building, in the meeting rooms,' said Henry. 'He was a player, so he kind of has that energy like we all do … He brings a great energy that I think everybody likes.' This isn't 2023 or 2024. The Patriots will be prepared and have a plan. Vrabel restores credibility and a visible identity to a team desperately in need of both as it tries to wind its clock to winning time again. In Vrabel They Trust. Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
USA Today
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Opinion: Who is this messy Bill Belichick? The once private coach on display
Opinion: Who is this messy Bill Belichick? The once private coach on display Show Caption Hide Caption Omarion Hampton on Bill Belichick joining North Carolina Tar Heels Former North Carolina RB Omarion Hampton just missed the Bill Belichick reign for the Tar Heels, but chose his NFL dream instead. Sports Seriously The first time I met Bill Belichick was decades ago. It was after a training camp practice. We talked briefly and in those 20 minutes he crammed so much football, ideas, beliefs and strategies into the conversation it felt like a talk with an encyclopedia. More conversations would follow. Football on top of football wrapped inside a big ol' football. As you spent more time around the Patriots, you'd notice something else: Belichick ran the team with an iron fist. This is not breaking news. Many know this. It just bears repeating in this moment as we watch Belichick's personal life spill out like it's a Teen Vogue cover story. For those who may not fully know, you have to understand this: When Belichick, now the North Carolina coach, controlled the Patriots for over two decades, it was the most ruthlessly run, tightest controlled organization in the history of the NFL, and maybe in the history of American professional sports. There weren't many loose lips. Leaks happened but they were rare. Patriots players worried about saying the wrong thing to the media so not to irritate their head coach. Much of the organization was on super-duper secret lockdown. It was this way for almost the entirety of Belichick's tenure. And he rarely, if ever, spoke about his personal life. It was onto Cincinnati. We're gonna look at the film. Do your job. We can only control what we can control. Player expressions and beliefs were often suppressed for the good of the system. Former Cincinnati Bengals wideout T.J. Houshmandzadeh once said of Patriots players: "They are completely scared of Bill, it's a dictatorship in New England." And anything about his personal life? Pfftt. Almost never. The Patriot Way was to disembowel everyone of personality for the benefit of the organization. That included, to be blunt, Belichick doing that to himself. The Belichick we are seeing now, living such a public life, with all kinds of personal drama and Instagram messages and human messiness is so foreign, so alien, it's like: Who is this person? Belichick did have at times a messy professional life. There was Spygate and Deflategate. There were gates. But personally? Almost nothing at all publicly. What we're seeing now from Belichick is in some ways a good thing. He has shed his android exoskeleton to publicly show human frailty and emotions. Love this. He's truly one of us after all. It also shows Belichick struggling with control. With the Patriots, he controlled the news. He controlled the PSIs of footballs. But now that he's promoting a new book, the news controls him. This has to be extremely uncomfortable for Belichick. When Belichick's girlfriend, Jordon Hudson, repeatedly interrupted Belichick's interview with CBS Mornings, it was, well, absolutely wild to watch. Tom Brady would have been scared to do that. None of this is to criticize Hudson, either. There are elements of misogyny entering the chat in this story and we all need to be careful how we're describing her. The point isn't the messiness. It's that we're seeing it. If you had told me ten years ago Belichick's girlfriend would be interrupting him during a television show about a book he was promoting, I would have laughed in your face. Or if you had told me that his girlfriend would have released an email Belichick sent to a small group of people in his inner circle, I would not have stopped laughing in your face. There is one part of the email that is extremely Belichick and it's him trash talking the media. 'This is about what I expected from the media," the email read in part. "We went through how important it was for me to put 'I (expletive deleted) up' in the book, and of course, that is the feature of this article — which is mostly about admitting mistakes and talking about a Super Bowl mistake. I am fine with putting mistakes in the book, but I am certainly not surprised that of 260+ pages, that is what they would highlight. And of course, the 'I (expletive deleted) up' is the click bait they used for the story. We'll see what the title of the article is, which I noticed has been conveniently left out — do we have approval on that. I would approve this article if we can also approve the headline, which is actually more important than the article." Then there was this notable part: "I will say again, that I want this book to be presented as a look at my professional life and how I did my job on the way up to, and as the leader of an organization that grew from a $500 m franchise to an $8 b organization that played in 10 and won 6 Super wins over 25 years. This book is about how I did my job, and lessons from my 50 years in and around the NFL — not a bathroom book that highlights my mistakes." What you hear in that graph is Belichick losing control and not liking it. Welcome, Bill! All of this begs the question: Who is this Bill Belichick? And what have you done with his android body?
New York Times
28-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
After respectable NFL Draft, can Patriots' brain trust be trusted again?
You've probably already heard the chatter: The New England Patriots could be a playoff team in 2025. Woah. The Pats haven't been to the playoffs since the 2021 season. And that was a best-forgotten 47-17 wild-card loss to the Buffalo Bills, whose domination was such on that bone-chilling night at Highmark Stadium that they scored a touchdown on every one of their seven drives. In other words, if you're the type who likes to croon about the so-called Patriot Way, you have to go way back to Feb. 3, 2019, and New England's 13-3 victory over the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LIII. Advertisement But while forecasting a possible 2025 playoff run is too much hoo-hah too soon, there's a much better way to talk in upbeat terms about the Patriots without sounding like you're laying the groundwork for a tryout for the team's cheerleading squad. It's called trust. Put in the form of a simple question, do you trust that New England's newly assembled football operations department has the team pointed in the right direction? This isn't about grading their selections in the 2025 draft, though it's worth noting that a lot of people believe the Patriots did a pretty good job shopping for the latest groceries. As The Athletic's Chad Graff wrote, 'They entered with a bunch of holes. They leave with a respectable roster and newfound explosiveness on offense to go with a pair of highly drafted linemen to protect quarterback Drake Maye.' And in his ranking of the draft classes from 1 to 32, The Athletic's Dane Brugler has the Patriots atop the list. Sure. If you're going to rebuild around your quarterback, it's a good idea to bring in some players who hopefully will keep Maye from needing to get his knee rebuilt. The Pats selected LSU offensive tackle Will Campbell with the No. 4 pick and then went the weapons route in the next two rounds with running back TreVeyon Henderson of Ohio State and wide receiver Kyle Williams of Washington State. Much has been said and written about the pre-draft interview the Patriots did with Campbell in Baton Rouge, La., and how 49-year-old, first-year coach Mike Vrabel, wanting to 'feel' Campbell, climbed into a blocking pad to do an on-field test drive. Campbell dropped Vrabel, who felt that showed him something, and next thing you know Campbell was wearing a Patriots ball cap on the big draft night stage in Green Bay, Wis. But I'm less interested in Vrabel getting dropped by Campbell and more interested in Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf dropping in on Campbell last fall. We can glean two important takeaways from that: • Campbell has been on the Pats' radar for a long time. • While Vrabel had the final word on how the Pats would use their No. 4 pick in the draft, he didn't summarily throw out whatever scouting was being done and data that was being mined before his being named coach. The new crew. — New England Patriots (@Patriots) April 26, 2025 For those looking for signs that the Patriots remain mired in organizational chaos, the 2025 NFL Draft is a good sign that they're not. True, it would have been next to impossible to discern suspected organizational chaos just by watching the draft on television, unless, say, the NFL Network showed a cutaway shot of Vrabel lifting Wolf off the floor by the shirt collar. But the sense is that the Pats are mostly on the same page. I use the word 'mostly' here, given something Wolf said Friday night about a disagreement involving the Pats' decision to select Henderson at No. 38. Advertisement After Wolf went for the cheap laugh — 'The hardest decision tonight was what to eat' — he got down to cases. 'There was a little bit of a debate about who we were going to pick, and ultimately, one of the players we were talking about got drafted,' Wolf said. 'So it didn't end up mattering, but I think it was a really good step in the right direction just for us working together in our relationship as co-workers, because we have to have productive disagreements for this to work. We can't just agree on everything; we can't just acquiesce to each other on something, so I think it was really productive from that standpoint.' Ryan Cowden, the new vice president of player personnel who was working in the front office of the Tennessee Titans when Vrabel was their head coach, said, 'I think the point (Wolf) was making before the pick was really about one of those moments where there was a time element involved, right? The clock's ticking. There's some discussions. There's a couple of players that involve opinions from both sides. 'I think it's a healthy thing,' Cowden said. 'I think in the end, what that does is it allows us to come to a consensus after listening to each other's opinions and understanding that you respect where those come from because of the work that's been put in by each of those individuals.' If some of this seems a wee bit performative, so what? It beats furrowed brows and pulled curtains. Besides, it's not so much the organization that's been on display by the Patriots these past two weeks, but the lack of disorganization. Seems like only yesterday that former coach Bill Belichick committed one of the biggest blunders of his mostly brilliant New England tenure, which was to hand over the offense to Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, two people with next to no experience on that side of the ball. Advertisement And while there were a lot of people (hello there, me!) who last year saluted the decision to hire Jerod Mayo as head coach, the missteps began almost immediately. The 2025 Patriots haven't played any games yet. They haven't even had a meeting. So all bets are off, figuratively and literally. For now, though, the New England Patriots organization looks, well, organized. (Photo of Mike Vrabel, left, and owner Robert Kraft: Winslow Townson / Imagn Images)
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Bill Belichick gives blunt and honest opinion on the 'Patriot Way'
Bill Belichick gives blunt and honest opinion on the 'Patriot Way' Former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick made a shocking admission in his book 'The Art of Winning.' According to the six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach, the "Patriot Way" isn't a real thing. The 'Patriot Way' had become synonymous with success and discipline over the course of Belichick's tenure with the organization. It was viewed as something that propelled the team to success and set them apart from the rest of the competition. Advertisement "Someone came up with the phrase, 'The Patriot Way.' I think they made some money off it. Good for them. Here's something you should know: The Patriot Way does not exist," Belichick wrote, via the Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy. The Patriots and Belichick parted ways in January 2024. New England moved quickly to hire Jerod Mayo as the next head coach, but that experiment only lasted a year before they fired him and moved on to Mike Vrabel. Meanwhile, Belichick has taken his talents to the college ranks as the new head coach at the University of North Carolina. Even if the "Patriot Way" isn't real, the Patriots would surely love to get back to that point after three consecutive losing seasons. There has been no way for the team after finishing 4-13 in the last two years. Advertisement Follow Patriots Wire on Twitter and Facebook. This article originally appeared on Patriots Wire: Bill Belichick gets uncomfortably honest about the 'Patriot Way'
