On Monday, Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel spoke with assembled media for 34 minutes at the AFC Coaches Breakfast as a part of the NFL Annual Meetings in Palm Beach, FL.
Here’s a sampling of the vast array of topics covered:
His thoughts on draft strategy, grading his team’s performance in free agency, what he makes of New England winning in Week 18 last season to lose the No. 1 pick, his excitement level for the addition of Stefon Diggs, how he plans to implement a passing game coordinator, his conversations with Ja’Lynn Polk, the health of Christian Barmore - I could keep going, but you get the point.
Vrabel was up for playing ball on Monday as the team sits just 24 days away from the 2025 NFL Draft.
One topic broached that could have draft day implications was what he thought of Heisman Trophy-winning dual-threat phenom Travis Hunter playing both sides of the football at the pro level in 2025.
“Mike - you spent time playing both ways, obviously, in the NFL,” said Chris Gasper of The Boston Globe. “You were able to do it, but not to the degree that Travis Hunter has done in college. So how difficult is it for him at the NFL level to play both ways, the same volume, the same productivity? Or do you have to evaluate him as just a corner, just a wide receiver?”
“I don’t know how anybody could say how hard it would be - we’ve never seen a player, you know, necessarily do it,” said Vrabel. “I think that there’s some things that he can improve on by, you know, probably concentrating on one position. But never going to put any restrictions on Travis or any player. We try to - as much as they can handle, we’re gonna continue to put more on their plate.
“And so, if he were on our football team, and he showed a great skill at one position and was starting to really do well in his conditioning and it didn’t fall off and it didn’t drop, you know, we would be open to playing everybody that we had at more than one position. Anything that would help the football team, I would be all in favor of.”
“Does he have to have a primary, though? A primary position?” Gasper asked in a follow-up.
“Well, I think to improve, I think there has to be a primary focus, just to be able to get some of the details that are gonna be required at this league,” Vrabel responded. “So you know, we’ll see once everybody’s on our football team where they end up playing or where they end up starting out in practice.”
If Hunter is, indeed, on the board at No. 4, it makes this line of questioning a lot more interesting. But conventional wisdom tells us that won’t be the case.
While there’s still almost a month to go before day one of the NFL Draft, Hunter has long-been projected to be a top three pick. Unless trades occur, that still feels like an almost certainty for a player with his talent level on both sides of the ball (and especially certain after the Giants made multiple veteran QB signings in free agency while holding the No. 3 pick).
But if things do get funky at the top of the draft, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Vrabel and executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf could have a tough decision to make.
And with MassLive reporting in February that Hunter was New England’s top-rated wide receiver and cornerback for this year’s positional draft board, there’s clearly intrigue from a team that addressed most of their needs for the defensive front seven in free agency.
At the very least, we know the organization has met with Hunter face-to-face, as Vrabel shared a funny story between him and the 21-year-old while joining the NFL Network’s coverage of day one of the NFL Scouting Combine..
Draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah asked, “Have you been insulted at all? Because I feel like with Travis Hunter, everybody’s talked about Champ Bailey and Charles Woodson, and I feel like you’ve not gotten mentioned properly in this conversation.”
Jeremiah, like Gasper on Monday, was referencing Vrabel’s occasional snaps at tight end on goal line situations, leading to receiving touchdowns in two different Super Bowl wins for the Patriots.
Vrabel immediately jumped in, saying, “I’m sure Travis doesn’t even know, but we were kind of jawing back-and-forth as he left last night, and I said, ‘You’re not the only one to played two ways film. Like, there were some other guys that did this, too.’ And he kind of looked at me and we laughed.”
The flirtation between the Vrabel administration and Hunter’s camp is evident. But unfortunately for the Patriots, they do not control their own destiny when it comes to their ability to draft the Colorado-product.
It’s going to take three teams saying “no,” or an unexpected trade-up by New England to guarantee them the chance of selecting a player attempting to become the Shohei Ohtani of the NFL.
And if you believe Vrabel, the Patriots will give Hunter the runway to play both ways.
Whether he’ll reach Ohtani levels is another topic for another day.
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