{"id":126447,"date":"2025-06-13T11:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T11:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/126447\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T11:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T11:02:10","slug":"keion-white-in-a-better-place-with-new-patriots-coaching-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/126447\/","title":{"rendered":"Keion White in a better place with new Patriots coaching staff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Keion<\/p>\n

New England Patriots defensive end Keion White (99) reacts during the second half of an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Rams, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2024, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo\/Greg M. Cooper)AP<\/p>\n

FOXBOROUGH – Last season, Keion White <\/a>wasn\u2019t shy when discussing the state of the team and the failures of the defense. <\/p>\n

Late in the year, he openly conveyed a lack of confidence in the coaching staff to fix the problems. <\/p>\n

The Patriots defensive end called for action.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething\u2019s gotta change,\u201d White said. <\/p>\n

He got his wish. <\/p>\n

Mike Vrabel <\/a>was hired to replace Jerod Mayo, and brought along a new coaching staff with just one holdover – special teams head Jeremy Springer.<\/p>\n

Speaking with the media on Tuesday, White\u2019s words were telling. <\/p>\n

He liked the direction the current defense was headed, and already sounded like a fan of Vrabel.<\/p>\n

\u201cVrabel\u2019s cool. He\u2019s a hard-ass,\u201d White said. \u201cHe\u2019s one of those guys who\u2019s not afraid to get his hands dirty. He\u2019ll come out, put the pads on, and let you go through the defensive line drills with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

White was especially effusive in his praise of outside linebackers coach Mike Smith who had been an outside linebackers coach and pass rush specialist with the Minnesota Vikings previously.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a really good coach helping me. Coach Smith was telling me steps, alignment, things like that I haven\u2019t traditionally heard,\u201d White said Tuesday following the team\u2019s indoor minicamp workout.<\/a> \u201cSo just that next step of having that coach behind me is really big for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

That suggests his coaches weren\u2019t behind him last year. White said he and Smith have really connected. Then he really lowered the boom on Mayo & Co.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s doing a good job of saying, \u2018This is what you need to think of, this is your thought process,\u2019’\u2019 White said said of Smith. \u201dThat\u2019s something I don\u2019t think I had before and what I was missing; I was training myself, I\u2019m not going to lie. Now I feel like I have a coach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously, that was a direct shot at Mayo and last year\u2019s defensive coaches.<\/p>\n

White played in all 17 games last season. He registered five sacks, seven tackles for loss and 16 quarterback hits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New England Patriots defensive end Keion White (99) reacts during the second half of an NFL football game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2050],"tags":[30497,7,5648,1167,249,2326,2094,6,3846,208],"class_list":{"0":"post-126447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-england-patriots","8":"tag-_gc32193","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-isolated","11":"tag-new-england","12":"tag-new-england-patriots","13":"tag-newengland","14":"tag-newenglandpatriots","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-nflraw24","17":"tag-patriots"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114675721457498993","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}