PHOENIX, Ariz. — For 30 minutes, New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel sat at a round table and danced around a slew of questions that got at the same thing: Are the Patriots going to trade for Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown?

There were 10 questions that got at the Brown dilemma ahead for the Patriots. Are they still considering it? Do they have the cap space? Would they give up a first-round pick in 2027? Do they have enough at wide receiver?

“We’re going to try to do everything we can to strengthen our roster through the draft, through free agency and multiple ways of player acquisition,” Vrabel said. “So, anything that we can continue to do to strengthen the roster, we’re going to try to do.”

In short, Vrabel didn’t budge much on the biggest question surrounding his team. And it’s a question that isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.

The Eagles are incentivized to wait until June before trading Brown. So there might not be an answer for two months. The Patriots already engaged in serious trade talks with the Eagles, but those have been shelved for now.

In the meantime, the Patriots roll ahead with the wide receivers on the roster after cutting Stefon Diggs and signing Romeo Doubs.

“We targeted Romeo with the consistency that he’s shown in his first four years in the NFL,” Vrabel said. “And I think he’s gotten better. I think he’s improved each and every year. … Kayshon (Boutte), I think DeMario (Douglas) is a player that’s going to really continue to grow and develop, and we have to find ways to get him the ball. Kyle (Williams), really excited. We talked about him just improving his play strength, and that’s something that he’s trying to focus on here in the offseason. We know what his speed is and his release skills, and the ability to go and track the ball down the field. So, there’s a lot of guys that we’re excited about.”

Here are some of the other things we learned about the Patriots at the league meetings.

An offensive identity

While the Patriots had the best offense in the NFL last season based on expected points added per play, they have a clear focus for how they want to improve on that side of the ball this season. And that was reflected in their free-agency plan.

While the Patriots’ surface-level stats in the running game were solid (they ranked 18th in yards per carry and fifth in total rushing yards), Vrabel felt the running game was too boom or bust. They had the fifth-most rushes in the league of 10-plus yards and the third-most rushes of 20 yards or more.

But they struggled to run the ball consistently (they ranked 26th in rushing success rate), something they want to change next season. That’s part of why they signed fullback Reggie Gilliam and blocking tight end Julian Hill.

“We want to be more consistent running the football,” Vrabel said. “This isn’t like we’re going to run it every single play. It’s just that I felt like there were too many times where we wanted to run it, and it was just inefficient. Now we popped some, which was great. We had some explosives. … But I want to be able to do it more consistently to allow for some of the run actions in the passing game to really come alive. It’s a tough league if you have to sit there and drop back and throw the football as much as we did in the last game of the season.”

Doubling down on the goal 

One day after Robert Kraft downplayed the high expectations for his team following its Super Bowl run, suggesting the goal next season was simply to make the playoffs since “anything can happen” from there, Vrabel didn’t shy away from expressing his lofty ambitions.

“Championships will remain the goal,” Vrabel said. “It will never change. I appreciate Robert’s support. We want to win the division, we want to host playoff games and we want to compete for championships. We got a taste of that. We saw what that looked like. We saw the environment that it created to be able to play those playoff games at home, which was unbelievable and so much fun.”

NFLPA feedback

After the Patriots got poor marks again in an anonymous report card created by the NFLPA, Vrabel said he puts more stock into the feedback he gets directly from players.

“Don’t want to focus on the report card,” Vrabel said. “I want to focus on what our players say to me and (vice president of football operations and strategy) John Streicher and anybody in our organization. We constantly are asking them — we have a leadership group that we believe in and we trust. We won’t be able to (address) every recommendation. We won’t be able to do every single thing they want to do. But we listen to them, and we try to add things to the training room.”

The Patriots’ standing will likely improve this season as the team moves its football operations into a brand-new, 160,000-square-foot facility next to Gillette Stadium.

“I think they’re going to enjoy coming to work, just from how nice it is, the functionality, the space,” Vrabel said. “It will be a great place for learning, a great place to develop our players — from the weight room, to the training room, to the locker room and cafeteria.”

Harold Landry update

Vrabel said he was “disappointed for” edge rusher Harold Landry, who continues to rehab from a knee injury that slowed him during the 2025 season.

Landry still led the Patriots in sacks with 8.5. In the first five weeks of the season, Landry had a pressure rate of 16.2, which ranked 24th in the league. But he suffered the injury in Week 6, and it lingered for the rest of the season. His pressure rate from Week 6 on dropped to 10.9.

“It’s just unfortunate,” Vrabel said. “I think that anybody that watched tape could see Harold before hurting his knee, and then after. And so he’s a player that cares deeply about the team and his performance, and the impact that he makes, so I was disappointed for him. But like everything else, he works his tail off right now to get back. So I don’t really know where it’s at right now, because he’s going through the rehab process.”