The New England Patriots spent Saturday at the 2026 NFL Draft making trades and selecting six players, but head coach Mike Vrabel was not in communication with the team, a team executive said.
Vrabel announced on Thursday that he would miss Day 3 of the draft to attend counseling with his family. The announcement came amid ongoing questions about photos published by the New York Post showing Vrabel at an Arizona hotel hugging and holding hands with Dianna Russini, who was The Athletic’s senior NFL insider at the time. Russini resigned from The Athletic on April 14.
“Last night, we kind of talked through things and made the decision that the time away really needs to be time away, so we were not in contact with Mike today other than some just, ‘Hope everything’s going OK,’ kind of texts early this morning,” Eliot Wolf, the Patriots’ executive vice president of player personnel, said Saturday. Wolf led the draft room while Vrabel was away.
ESPN’s Peter Schrager had reported on air during the draft Saturday that Vrabel would be in contact with his staff via phone or text, which contradicted Vrabel’s previous statement. But Schrager later corrected himself, tweeting, “I’ve learned that in the end, both Vrabel and the team ultimately chose not to interrupt him and his family.”
Wolf said that Vrabel did leave the New England front office a message after Day 2 of the draft on Friday night.
“Just words of encouragement,” Wolf said. “He knows our process, and again, we talked about what kind of players we needed to add. We knew what kind of players he liked, and, obviously, we drafted some of the guys that he had an affinity for today.”
While head coaches are typically more involved on Days 1 and 2 of the draft when the players are better known, it’s still incredibly rare for a head coach to miss any time around the draft.
But Wolf said things ran smoothly for the Patriots, even without Vrabel in attendance.
“I think it was business as usual,” Wolf said. “A lot of conversations with the coaching staff, a lot of conversations with the scouting staff. Day 3 of the draft is really the … scouts’ day. It’s the chance for some of these unheralded players to have the opportunity to get drafted, maybe some of the guys that some of the coaches didn’t even look at.”