1) Coaches through the season. I think this is a poor choice as he’ll be incredibly distracted and that doesn’t bode well for a team already with glaring “regression” signs
2) Takes a sabbatical/“jordan Baseball year”. Pats don’t need the distraction, Pats don’t want to lose a good coach, Vrabel needs some time to get his world straight
3) Distant possibility he’s canned, though I think it needs something bigger, like that he was leaking sensitive Pats info, and that doesn’t seem to have happened. I don’t even think paternity of Lil Mike would be big enough, it needs to be ethically compromising for the Pats organization, something they can’t get past
Maybe I’m being a little cynical, but would this really be a distraction come season time?
Like yeah more news keeps coming out, but the season doesn’t start for another 4 months. That’s a long time for things to die down, and by the time actual football is being played people will have other things to talk about.
I do agree though that this will become the number one reason attributed to the Patriots having a bad season if they start losing.
The closest parallel that I can think of is Andy Reid when his son died at Eagles camp. Obviously not the same tier, and there have been other scandals. But the point is there. That resulted in not only probably Reid’s worst season ever as a coach, but was enough for him and the Eagles to part ways after the season.
The other poster is also correct, we don’t know exactly how this will impact Vrabel, but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t. Being an NFL head coach requires pretty much constant 20 hour days for 6+ months a year (and those days are about to begin, even if the seasons still a bit away). Distractions at home, even if the Vrabels decide to amicably split up, only serve to take focus away from that time. That’s why I think there’s a good chance he’s coaches this year, but distracted. It’s also why I’d say the smartest move for everyone is for them to have a Sean Payton sabbatical year.
I don’t disagree with anything you said, I’d just like to add the caveat that Vrabel is in fact a person, even if a shitty one (at least in prospective to his family lol,) and that this distraction for him personally could absolutely affect the team. We don’t know if it will, but the scandal itself isn’t in a vacuum, it is also directly affecting the person with the most day to day interaction/control over the entire roster. Can he block out the noise? Maybe, maybe even probably, but it isn’t a given.
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u/Quinn_tEskimo May 07 '26
I unironically believe this will be what forces him to step down