Exclusive Mike Vrabel 1-on-1 Interview Previewing the Raiders in Week 1 | New England Patriots

[Music] Welcome back to Patriots All Access. Time to sit down for the first time during a regular season with the head coach. Mike Frael joins me now. Coach, good to see you. You, too. How are you? Last time we talked out at camp. You’ve had a lot of practices, a lot of joints on the road, at home, three preseason games. How’d your first preseason go as the head coach? Well, I think we got through. I think there’s a lot of things that we got done and again, we’ll have to continue to improve, but I mean, I love the crowd. I love the energy. I love the support from the fans and and hopefully we’ll continue to give them reasons to come out and and and cheer and and stand behind us. Preseason isn’t just for the players. It’s for the staff, too. You got a brand new staff. I’ve talked to you a couple times about guys being upstairs, guys downstairs, the whole communication thing, coaching on the sideline. How impressed are you with the way everybody communicated? Well, I mean, I think it, like you said, it is for everybody. It’s it’s for our operation and that’s why I felt like getting in the stadium with the scrimmage, you know, the um you know, we had a blue white scrimmage and uh that went really well. But that was our first action in the stadium. Again, that’s their day. That game day is their day to to go play, but we have to be able to give them some adjustments and just give them some recognition of things that are going on. So, I did feel like that process is good. It’s going to have to be really good throughout the season to to help us win. I want to talk about identity and I even go back to 2001 when you guys got here. I think it was what 17 unrestricted free agents. It’s hard to come together establish that identity. You’ve talked about that since day one here. I’m starting to see it and hear it from the players. Are you seeing it? Do you like where it’s going? Well, we can talk about it. We have to be about it. you know, it’s the whole I see better than I hear and and we have to see it and it has to be able to to be viewed for them to understand what it is and playing complimentary and you know each phase helping each other and the special teams setting the table and the way that we play and the style in which we play. Um that that has to be we have to put it out on the field and we we practice it, but the only really time that it matters is is Sunday and when we play games. All right, week one it’s here. It’s the Raiders. Pete Carol’s Raiders. You know, Pete, you’ve coached against Pete a long time. There’s not a ton of film out there, but what do you see when you look at the Raiders? Uh, is it his style team? Well, I mean, I do we do see a lot of uh his style team. Obviously, they’re going to run a run the football. You know, they got a veteran quarterback. Um, but a high draft pick here with with Genty. You know, they’ve got some good young skill. Uh, Bowowers is obviously elite and um, you know, defensively it’s a veteran group. They’ve got very good specialists. Their punter is excellent. Their their field goal kicker is excellent. Um, so again, it’s a veteran team on defense. Um, offensively, the skilled players are young. Jacob’s got some, you know, years to them and then some understanding in the slot, Gino Smith, but the skilled players are young and explosive. So, it’ll be critical for us to to limit the the X plays uh defensively and make them earn it. You remember what the element of the unknown was as a player, as a coach? Does that worry you? Keep you up more at night? Certainly keeps you up a lot more than it does as a player. I uh I slept well as a player. Uh you try to focus on a lot a lot more as a coach. So um there’s going to be things that we’re not going to be able to cover uh that we won’t know. And you know, they have to use their rules. The quarterbacks are going to have to make points. They have to get us in protections, know where the hots are. If they come, you know, defensively, we won’t be able to show them every single play that they’ve probably worked on. Uh, we’ll have to be able to to set an edge, build a wall, swarm tackle this guy, know where 89 is, and somehow affect the quarterback. Time now for the Sports Illustrated ticket question of the week, and it comes from Saul F. Uh, wants to ask, do you get any butterflies at night? Do you stay up at night? Do you get nervous before games? Uh, I probably do a little bit. I mean, it’s it’s anxious. It’s I’m excited for the players. I want the players to do well. And again, I was lucky and fortunate to to have success in this league. the teams that I was on and and I want the players to experience the same thing. That that is my number one goal. If you want to ask the coach a question, you have to follow the team on Twitter atriots.com backthe coach. We’ll be back later in the show with some more stuff. Coach is going to hang tight and we’ll have some stuff for you on the other side. More ball access right after this.

Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel sits down with former Patriots quarterback Scott Zolak to discuss the team’s progression through preseason leading into their week 1 matchup against the Las Vegas Raiders.

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