Well, well, well. Even Patriots owner Robert Kraft knew that what happened this past season – while a hell of a lot of fun – didn’t go like his coaching staff thought it would.
“I think actually the team way overachieved what any of us thought would happen, and it was wonderful,” he said from the league meetings earlier this week.
That dovetails with what Mike Vrabel said in his end-of-the-season press conference from Foxborough.
“Every time you guys ask me about my expectations, I say I try not to have any so that I’m not disappointed,” he said in mid-February. “But I would say that they, now that we’re done, probably exceeded expectations.”
As I’ve written here and said elsewhere (All 32 podcast/NBC Sports Boston/WEEI), Vrabel and company never looked at the roster and said, “Oh yeah, we’re a 14-win team with a chance to go to the Super Bowl.” That even played into the way he coached the team – sprinkling younger players into the lineup while also managing some of his veterans, starting way back in the spring, and maintaining a lighter schedule for the likes of Morgan Moses, Christian Barmore, and Hunter Henry. That approach worked. In fact, it was damn near flawless.
But now what? Kraft was honest about altering expectations for the upcoming season. The road schedule is rough. Trips to LA (Chargers) and Seattle loom (wondering if that Seahawks game will be the season-opener). The Jaguars game could be an international tilt. Mix in visits to Chicago, Detroit, and KC, and you can understand why the big boss is being more realistic than usual.
“Yeah, we have a pretty tough schedule, I think the hardest schedule, a lot of west coast travel,” Kraft said, saying he’s hoping for a playoff berth.
But when presented with the owner’s public approach, Vrabel’s competitive edge came to the fore for all to see.
“I talked to Robert about that,” the coach said, smiling (I think he was joking, but). “He and I had a really good conversation. … Championships will remain the goal. That will never change. Appreciate Robert’s support, but we want to win the division. We want to host playoff games, and we want to compete for championships. And so 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…
“We’ll play whoever we have to play. We understand what this looks like. We’re going to play the division winner schedule, and that’s how it goes.”
What that said to me is that Vrabel, who never lacks confidence, truly feels this roster is
