The New England Patriots began what they hope is their return to relevance on Monday when they introduced Mike Vrabel as the team’s new head coach.
After three straight losing seasons, including back-to-back 4-13 disasters, Robert and Jonathan Kraft are hoping that Vrabel can restore some professionalism, pride and, most importantly, winning football to the organization where he spent eight seasons as a player and won three Super Bowls.
Making his weekly appearance on The Greg Hill Show, WFAN host and longtime NFL analyst Boomer Esiason said he is a fan of the hire and believes Vrabel brings “instant credibility” to the Patriots. Listen to the full interview above.
“You get a lot. You get instant credibility,” Esiason said. “You get a guy that's in the Patriots Ring of Honor. You get a guy that's won three Super Bowls. You get a guy that's played in over 200 games. … What you get is you get a football lifer, man. You get a guy that is neck deep in everything and all things football, and so much so that he was actually on this Browns sideline after he got fired from the Tennessee Titans, which most coaches wouldn't be doing. So, I think you get instant credibility. The other thing, too, is he's got the look. I mean, every owner in the NFL would love to have a guy that looks like that, that has the presence of Mike. It just fits. It's too perfect.”
Esiason said there is the added benefit of taking Vrabel away from the rival Jets, who he heard wanted to hire Vrabel “in the worst way.”
“The Jets wanted him in the worst way,” Esiason said. “Could you imagine? Bob Kraft would have the Norovirus for the next three years if that ever happened. So, he dipped into his wallet and he spent a lot of money, and he paid off a lot of guys, and here we sit, and he's got the guy he wants. And I think if you're a part of the Patriots family or the Patriots Nation, you've got to be stoked this morning.”
Esiason did say that he didn’t like the way the Patriots rushed through the interview process, but that he thinks they landed the right guy anyways.
“This is the absolute perfect fit. I don't like how they went about it,” he said. “It's completely obvious and transparent that these interviews with Byron Leftwich and Pep Hamilton were a total sham. That's a whole other story, maybe, for another day. … I don't know what it would be like to be going into an interview knowing that I'm not getting the job, and the guy that I'm talking to across the desk is a guy who's just using me to fulfill some sort of quota or protocol. That just doesn't seem genuine to me, and I think that's a real problem. I really, really do. But at the end of the day, Bob Kraft has done so much for so many, I don't want to ever question his right to hire who he wants to run his billion-dollar franchise. So, I do agree that he got the right guy. I just don’t like the way that he had to go about getting it.”