On Monday, Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel was back on the WEEI airwaves with The Greg Hill Show, as Patriots Monday is back for its 31st season.
That means every Monday throughout the football season, you’ll hear Vrabel with the morning show, and quarterback Drake Maye with WEEI Afternoons.
If you love Boston sports, this will be appointment-listening.
And on Monday, Vrabel talked about his fellow weekly WEEI guest, giving us a window into how he views his young signal caller less than a month away from his team’s Week 1 game against the Raiders.
With preseason game No. 1 in the books as well as 13 days of training camp in the can, we’ve seen the entire “Drake Maye Experience” play out before our eyes.
The Good: Six consecutive practices without throwing an interception during 11-on-11 drills, and a dominant joint practice against Washington’s first team defense.
The Bad: An avoidable sack-fumble on Friday night during the offense’s first possession, where the 22-year-old should have either thrown the ball away or taken a sack.
Vrabel said Monday that while he realizes the play on the field from Maye isn’t always going to be perfect, there’s one aspect of his game that he expects to never waiver.
"The expectation is that he's leading this football team,” said Vrabel. “That's what the job of the head coach and the quarterback is. That's pretty much how this thing goes. And that he can't take days off.
“I mean, sometimes the performance isn't going to be extraordinary, but the leadership and the demeanor has to be. And I think he's learning that. I love the fact that he's willing to learn and push and try to do those things to where he's demanding of everybody and making sure that everybody's on the same page."
The roller coaster ride of Maye’s rookie year provided most of the peaks of last season, while also punctuating some of the most frustrating losses.
Vrabel said Monday that one of his main points of emphasis throughout camp for his whole team is staying off that ride.
“We talked about staying off the roller coaster, you know what I mean?” said Vrabel. “Roller coasters go up, they go down, they get stuck sometimes, and then you're really in trouble. So we're trying to stay off the roller coaster and just continue to build some consistency in what we're doing positively.”
With how inexperienced the 2024 coaching staff was in New England, that roller coaster ride was inevitable. You were going to have the highs of upsetting the Bengals on the road to open the season, and you were going to have the lows of an embarrassing loss at home to the Chargers in front of a half-filled stadium.
That inexperience in leadership is gone for 2025, as Vrabel completely reshaped the staff in New England, adding coaches on both sides of the football with years and years of experience to pull from.
Chief among them is old-but-new offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who returns to 1 Patriot Place for his third stint as the team’s play caller.
Vrabel said on Monday that having McDaniels in the fold is going to be key for Maye’s continued development.
“Well, certainly it's key to coaching,” said Vrabel. “And things that we ask our coaches to do is just try to develop players. And I think that the one thing that's important is - yeah, you want to use testimonials of other players, but you also have to be careful how you frame it, right?
“Making sure that it's similar, and that they can see the similarities - maybe who you're trying to use as an example, right? And just different players that he's coached, and not just Tom [Brady], per se. But the development of other young quarterbacks through this system, I think, can be very beneficial.”
Vrabel, Maye and the rest of the Patriots will be back on the practice field for day 14 of training camp on Monday, as practices are now closed to the public moving forward.
The team will be off on Tuesday for travel, and will resume camp on Wednesday in Minnesota as they begin consecutive days of joint practices with the Vikings.
Stay locked in to WEEI and WEEI.com for all the latest from Patriots training camp.