The incentives of the Mike Vrabel hiring process were brazen

The Patriots hired Mike Vrabel as their head coach this past week. It was one of the worst-kept secrets I’ve ever seen that he was the main guy on their radar. By which I mean, to quote The Athletic’s Chad Graff:

This was written on (wait for it) December 22nd. While everyone else was getting ready for Christmas, the Vrabel drumbeat was starting for the Patriots.

I would not argue that Jerod Mayo was such a good coach that he had to keep his job — I dinged him several times for the state of his defense and his clock management this past season. I do think that becoming the coach-in-waiting of this organization was a mistake for him, even as it must have seemed great at the time. There’s just not enough organizational buy-in on a guy who gets the job without a thorough search of the current landscape. Now is Mayo regretting it after socking away $3.5 million and perhaps having multiple years remaining on that contract? Probably not.

But he will now have to start over again on building another chance to a second job despite, I would say, doing a pretty good job developing Drake Maye. It isn’t like Brian Callahan got fired for doing an overall worse job in Tennessee in his first season. The standard of one-and-done is tricky, having been someone who covered the Texans for the David Culley and Lovie Smith years. But I would say it starts with a coach who isn’t in demand. Nobody but the Texans interviewed Culley or Lovie Smith. Nobody ever interviewed Antonio Pierce. And because of the coach-in-waiting tag, we never really got to see how Mayo was perceived around the league. Is it (pardon my language) fucking awful optically that all of those men are black? It sure is. That isn’t the whole story in any of those places, but it is a part of it.

There are two thoughts I am holding in my head at the same time. Here’s what they are:

-I agree that Mike Vrabel is a good enough head coach to be worth overturning apple carts for.
-The Patriots probably need to be punished for how badly they made a sham of the Rooney Rule here.

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