Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye are taking over Football America – The New York Times

NFL
NFL Week 11
Drake Maye celebrates a touchdown during the second quarter of the Patriots' 27-14 victory against the Jets on Thursday night at Gillette Stadium. Logan Bowles / Getty Images
It’s just a matter of time before we see New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel and quarterback Drake Maye teaming up to do one of those buddy TV commercials that are all the rage these days. 
You know, like “Scrubs” veterans Zach Braff and Donald Faison plugging T-Mobile Internet, or the Xfinity Multiview spot in which Vince Vaughn whips up his special pancakes for Owen Wilson.
Advertisement
Vrabel and Maye got a ton of nationally televised postgame exposure Thursday night, this after the Patriots emerged with a methodical, taking-care-of-business 27-14 victory over the New York Jets at Gillette Stadium.
Sitting next to each other on the set, Vrabel did some calculating in his head and came up with this: “My younger son Carter’s the same age as Drake, and I’m thinking, my God, am I old. I’m 50, and it’s just so much fun because these guys are experiencing a lot of this for the first time.
“I forget that sometimes. I forget that the left side of our line is 21 and 22 years old, and our quarterback is 23, and I’m like, OK, there’s going to be a lot of firsts for this program.”
LOUD MVP chants from the Patriots fans for Drake Maye 👀 #TNFonPrime pic.twitter.com/TtIzhhuuQQ
— NFL on Prime Video (@NFLonPrime) November 14, 2025

This was after Vrabel did his customary postgame rah-rah session in which he interacts with every one of his players in the hallway leading to the New England locker room. And if I have the timeline correct, it was just before Maye used some of his own postgame airtime to answer a question about all those “MVP!” chants by pointing at Vrabel and saying, “Yeah, the coach here, and the guys around me …”
Boilerplate? Well, yeah, some of it was. However, what’s striking about all this is how quickly the Patriots have come from being a doormat to a franchise with a coach and a quarterback who are fast becoming … a brand. And it all seemed to crystallize on the “Thursday Night Football” postgame show, which must have been especially tough for Jets fans, given all the talk about Vrabel having talked with the Jets before winding up as New England’s head coach.
It’s easy to turn some dials and pull some levers to create an alternate reality in which Vrabel was coaching the Jets on Thursday night. Since it’s only make-pretend, we can recast the Jets as an organized, eyes-on-the-prize team, thanks to Vrabel, of course. Maybe it would have been the Jets coming in with the snazzy winning streak. Perhaps it would have been the Patriots with just two wins and no hope.
Advertisement
Yes, we can play that game, except there’s no make-pretend in which Maye is the Jets’ quarterback. In the end, that’s why Vrabel is coaching the Patriots. They had a quarterback on the rise. That’s it. Stop right there. Yes, Vrabel is a former Patriots player who played on Super Bowl-winning teams, and he loves the fans, the history, the fall foliage and all the rest. However, none of that was going to get Vrabel to New England if there was no quarterback.
So well have Vrabel and Maye connected that it’s easy to forget New England is coming off back-to-back 4-13 seasons. But then the Jets pulled into Gillette Stadium to provide a living, breathing reminder of what it’s like to be not just a bad football team, but a bad program, everything always going wrong, the wheels always falling off.
That’s where the Patriots might have been heading. Maye was here for the most recent 4-13 campaign, but he was a first-year question mark back then, not a second-year exclamation point. Plus, the coach last season was Jerod Mayo, who was not yet ready to be an NFL head coach. If, at the end of last season, you were able to look at the Patriots and see a 9-2 team and “MVP!” chants for Maye, if only they could get a new coach, good for you. Such fixes are generally not so easy.
Give the sometimes-maligned Patriots owner, Robert Kraft, credit for firing Mayo after one season. To do so was a tacit confession by Kraft that he’d made a mistake when he hired Mayo in the first place. Let’s be honest: It’s the 21st century, and nobody admits to being wrong anymore.
However, Kraft did just that, and then hired Vrabel. And here we are. Not only are the 2025 Patriots 9-2, but they also have, in Vrabel and Maye, two of the most instantly recognizable people in the NFL. Think about that. 
And don’t the networks know it? Vrabel and Maye were kept on the national postgame show so long that linebacker Robert Spillane was the first Patriots player to appear at the team’s standard postgame media availability. It’s usually the coach who goes first, followed by the quarterback. It might have just been a matter of time before the Patriots rolled out the Gillette Stadium head of concessions while Vrabel and Maye were getting their faces sunburned by those national spotlights.
Imagine being a Jets fan having to watch all that. The Patriots have turned it around, whereas the Jets keep going around in circles.
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle
Steve Buckley is a columnist for The Athletic. He was previously a sports columnist for the Boston Herald and The National Sports Daily. Earlier stops include covering baseball for the Hartford Courant, Tacoma News Tribune and Portland (Maine) Press Herald. Follow Steve on Twitter @BuckinBoston

source