{"id":846554,"date":"2026-04-01T07:06:44","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/846554\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T07:06:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:06:44","slug":"what-we-learned-about-the-patriots-as-mike-vrabel-stays-mum-on-potential-a-j-brown-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/846554\/","title":{"rendered":"What we learned about the Patriots as Mike Vrabel stays mum on potential A.J. Brown trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHOENIX, Ariz. \u2014 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?<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to try to do everything we can to strengthen our roster through the draft, through free agency and multiple ways of player acquisition,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cSo, anything that we can continue to do to strengthen the roster, we\u2019re going to try to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, Vrabel didn\u2019t budge much on the biggest question surrounding his team. And it\u2019s a question that isn\u2019t likely to go away anytime soon.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> with the Eagles, but those have been shelved for now.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the Patriots roll ahead with the wide receivers on the roster after cutting Stefon Diggs and signing Romeo Doubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe targeted Romeo with the consistency that he\u2019s shown in his first four years in the NFL,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cAnd I think he\u2019s gotten better. I think he\u2019s improved each and every year. \u2026 Kayshon (Boutte), I think DeMario (Douglas) is a player that\u2019s 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\u2019s something that he\u2019s 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\u2019s a lot of guys that we\u2019re excited about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are some of the other things we learned about the Patriots at the league meetings.<\/p>\n

An offensive identity<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

While the Patriots\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

But they struggled to run the ball consistently (they ranked 26th in rushing success rate), something they want to change next season. That\u2019s part of why they signed fullback Reggie Gilliam and blocking tight end Julian Hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to be more consistent running the football,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t like we\u2019re going to run it every single play. It\u2019s 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. \u2026 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doubling down on the goal\u00a0<\/p>\n

One day after Robert Kraft downplayed the high expectations<\/a> for his team following its Super Bowl run, suggesting the goal next season was simply to make the playoffs since \u201canything can happen\u201d from there, Vrabel didn\u2019t shy away from expressing his lofty ambitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cChampionships will remain the goal,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cIt will never change. I appreciate Robert\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

NFLPA feedback<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t want to focus on the report card,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cI 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 \u2014 we have a leadership group that we believe in and we trust. We won\u2019t be able to (address) every recommendation. We won\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Patriots\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think they\u2019re going to enjoy coming to work, just from how nice it is, the functionality, the space,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cIt will be a great place for learning, a great place to develop our players \u2014 from the weight room, to the training room, to the locker room and cafeteria.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harold Landry update<\/p>\n

Vrabel said he was \u201cdisappointed for\u201d edge rusher Harold Landry, who continues to rehab from a knee injury that slowed him during the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just unfortunate,\u201d Vrabel said. \u201cI think that anybody that watched tape could see Harold before hurting his knee, and then after. And so he\u2019s 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\u2019t really know where it\u2019s at right now, because he\u2019s going through the rehab process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX, Ariz. \u2014 For 30 minutes, New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel sat at a round table and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2068],"tags":[25,7,249,6,242,109,2476],"class_list":{"0":"post-846554","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-eagles","8":"tag-eagles","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-new-england-patriots","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-eagles","14":"tag-philadelphiaeagles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116328188042221071","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846554","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=846554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}