SANTA CLARA, Calif. — We made it.
Super Bowl Sunday.
Finally time for football, right?
Not so fast.
A week in the Bay Area uncovered plenty about the Patriots, from Mike Vrabel’s zingers in team meetings, Stefon Diggs’ extreme regularity, Drake Maye’s secret weapon juice machine, the backstory behind Wes Welker’s famous “foot soldiers” press conference, what it’s like to follow this team at the Super Bowl and how the staff brought parts of home to establish a comfort and routine this week.
And yet, there’s more.
Enjoy 10 leftover notes and thoughts from the week that led to Super Bowl LX:
1. Antonio Gibson, recovering
Remember him?
Antonio Gibson was in the Bay Area this week, and all signs point to a healthy recovery from the torn ACL he suffered during the Patriots’ win at Buffalo in Week 5, perhaps the defining win of their regular season. Following a typical recovery timeline, the veteran running back could be in line to return Week 1 next season.
2. Vrabel meeting leftovers pt. I
OK, back to Foxboro.
In his team meetings, now famous for Vrabel cracking on players, occasionally getting rookie left tackle Will Campbell fined and more, the head coach has a phrase he likes when showing clips of an explosive play.
“He gone!” Vrabel will shout.
“It’s something simple,” Pats left tackle Vederian Lowe said. “But it makes me laugh.”
3. Vrabel meeting leftovers pt. II
By now, you’ve heard the Patriots are experts in situational football thanks to Vrabel and vice president of football operations John “Stretch” Streicher. Most of the team’s situational preparation is done on Fridays, when they start with “Friday teach tape,” a cutup of plays from around the league that Streicher puts together for Vrabel to present in a morning meeting.
But the Patriots don’t just pull plays from last week or the week before that for this reel. Vrabel and Streicher will go years back into the archives to make a point about rare plays that could affect their next game.
“(Vrabel) will show plays throughout the year, from the previous week or three years ago, four years ago or the Super Bowl,” Pats outside linebackers coach Mike Smith said. “He really thinks about every situation that could come up in the game. And then things he’ll just call out as flat-out dumb plays. Like, ‘what the f— was this guy thinking?’”
4. Defensive disrespect
One of the more common Patriots storylines this week covered both the rise of their defense in the postseason, and the perceived slights players admitted have motivated their play.
Inside linebacker Christian Elliss, who is more reserved by nature but unafraid of a microphone, pinpointed exactly who is giving the Patriots bulletin-board material.
“It hasn’t really even been other teams. You know, most of the time you can look at other teams like, ‘Oh, look at what this player said.’ Most of the time it’s been reporters,” Elliss said. “And for us, we’re just going to use it as fuel to the fire.”
By the numbers, the Patriots defense registered as an average to above-average unit during the regular season. Since then, they’re tracking to finish among the greatest playoff defenses of all time, allowing 26 points in three games, good for fewer than one point per possession.
5. The coaches’ Dunkin’ run
During a regular game week, Tuesdays are the longest work day for NFL coaches. Especially in New England.
Patriots coordinators and assistants will spend upward of 16 hours building a game plan for the following Sunday, a process that requires statistical study, film review, meetings, discussion and debate. So to break up the long hours, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and quarterbacks coach Ashton Grant drive up Route 1 to pick up the same order at Dunkin’ every Tuesday at 3 p.m. They grab large coffees for themselves, Vrabel and passing game coordinator/tight ends coach Thomas Brown.
“Callie, who works at the Dunkin’, has our order memorized by heart,” Grant said. “And so she sees Josh’s car pull up, and she’s like, ‘I got all four for you.”
6. Tonga mum on free agency
The Patriots’ list of impending free agents is a short one.
Outside linebacker K’Lavon Chaisson is the biggest name to know, followed by some order of safety Jaylinn Hawkins, tight end Austin Hooper, inside linebacker Jack Gibbens and defensive lineman Khyiris Tonga. This season, Tonga has broken from his reputation as a run-first, run-only player and generated consistent push as an early-down pass rusher.
He has one sack this postseason, double his career total entering the season. Tonga will never start in New England, where he sits behind Milton Williams and Christian Barmore, but he does allow the Patriots to flex into different defensive fronts with heavy personnel. So has he thought about a return?
“No,” he said. “Not yet.
7. Maye’s confidence
Of all the growth Maye showed over his MVP-caliber season, which began with a disappointing loss to the Raiders and finished with him breaking several of Tom Brady’s franchise records, it’s the unseen progress that has impressed teammates the most.
“I can just tell you in that huddle, the confidence and how he speaks has grown so much,” rookie left guard Jared Wilson said. “It’s just so dominant and assertive now. And it was before, but you can tell he’s just picked it up just a notch.”
Maye was elected a team captain before the season, but Vrabel and McDaniels pushed him to elevate his leadership well afterward. The 23-year-old wanted to demonstrate he was worthy of leading the Patriots first, namely through his on-field production, which immediately followed that loss to Las Vegas. The week after, he led the Pats to their first win at Miami since 2019, and later commanded the first game-winning drive of his career in Buffalo.
8. Game plan revealed?
In a mid-week interview with Go Long TD, Patriots cornerback Carlton Davis said this week the defense has a simple plan for defending Jaxon Smith-Njigba, star Seahawks receiver and the NFL’s newly minted Offensive Player of the Year.
“We’re going to have (Christian Gonzalez) follow him,” Davis said. “Obviously, he’ll motion, and I’ll probably see him a couple of times.”
Smith-Njigba popped off for 10 catches, 153 yards and a touchdown in Seattle’s win over the Rams in the NFC Championship Game. His 1,793 receiving yards led the NFL during the regular season. So naturally, shadowing him with a first-rate cornerback like Gonzalez makes sense.
However, because of the Seahawks’ motions and stack formations, that may not be as easy as Davis made it sound. Vrabel hinted at that Thursday, when a deeper read of his comments suggests the Patriots may be open to occasional double-teams of Smith-Njigba and other coverages.
“I think it’s a balance,” he said. “I think there are times where you reasonably can’t just based on what they do with him and where he goes. We’ll have to be very aware of him, just like we’ll have to be very aware of being able to stop the run and the other things that they do really well. So, I think it’s just a good balance of being able to show different looks.”
9. Ben McAdoo’s role
One of the few holdovers from Jerod Mayo’s staff to the Vrabel era, Ben McAdoo mostly worked in the shadows this season.
His official title is senior defensive assistant, a curious change for a coach who has spent a lifetime on offense around a head-coaching stint with the Giants. Unlike the Patriots’ position coaches, McAdoo was not required to be available to reporters, which kept most of his responsibilities in his new role in the dark.
This week, one of his colleagues shone a light on how McAdoo has been helping the team. One of his chief responsibilities is preparing the scout-team offense, which is tasked every practice with simulating the next opponent in an 11-on-11 setting against the Pats’ starting defense.
“(Vrabel) gives him a lot of — I don’t want to say, leeway with it because it has to be within the opponent’s system — but he comes up with (play-calling) scripts,” Grant said. “He’s also sending videos to (backup quarterbacks) Josh Dobbs and Tommy DeVito while we’re in meetings, like, ‘Hey, when we go out there in this play, this is how I wanted (it) to look.’ And so he’s doing a good job.”
Grant said McAdoo, who coached quarterbacks for years, has helped him with his role this season.
“We’ve had a ton of conversations when we were evaluating quarterbacks in the draft. And I just wanted to pick his brain on a couple of things, because he’s been around the position at a high level,” Grant said.
The 30-year-old added he tries to learn from every coach on staff who previously worked with great quarterbacks. Specific to McAdoo, who coached Aaron Rodgers and Eli Manning, among others, Grant said he learned how to properly contextualize mistakes on tape by considering the finer points of the offense the quarterback was running.
“It’s asking, ‘What are they asking these guys to do in an offense?’ Every turnover is not just the same, and everything has a different reason and a different why behind it,” Grant said. “And (McAdoo) just kind of helped me bring that to realization.”
10. Quote of the Week
“You always knew that when he kicked (field goals), they were going to go in. I think that was just kind of what we always thought and knew if we got into those types of situations. The kick in the snow, that’s probably the greatest feat – one of the greatest feats I’ve ever seen on a football field. You could barely run, let alone approach and kick a football that length.” — Vrabel on ex-Patriots kicker Adam Vinatieri making the Pro Football Hall of Fame.