The Patriots will use analytics in three phases under Vrabel.
The Cleveland Browns have been far from the NFL’s model franchise when it comes to playing winning football since the dawn of the 21st century; they have won one playoff game since their rebirth in 1999. That does not mean that everything they do is necessarily bad, though.
One area in which the Browns stand out is their use of analytics. While hard to quantify on a win/loss basis, their work in the analytical field under general manager Andrew Berry has received considerable praise across the league. And with Mike Vrabel getting hired as New England Patriots head coach over the weekend, it might get a spin-off in New England soon.
Vrabel, after all, spent the 2024 season doing consulting work with the Browns. What his exact involvement with the team’s analytics staff looked like is not known, but he did mention Berry in his introductory presser on Monday. It is no stretch of the imagination that he was at least somewhat exposed to Cleveland’s approach to looking at the game from a data-driven perspective.
What this means for his Patriots tenure will be seen. On Monday, however, Vrabel outlined a rough plan.
“We want to use as much information as we can to make great, informed decisions in real time, with real people,” he explained during an appearance on WEEI.
“Things change — the weather, the backups, who you have in the game, how their defense is playing, how their offensive is playing, have you stopped them? We will always try to use that information. Excited to get with our staff here to see what they’ve done.”
Vrabel mentioned three areas in particular.
Player acquisition
“How do you apply analytics?” he asked in relation to the Patriots acquiring players. “The numbers, and the data, play speed, estimated play speed, all these different things that you can use to evaluate players. That’s one area that we’re going to try to use it.”
Using analytics to determine which players fit a team is not a novel concept. New England has done their version of that for years. One difference, however, is the amount of information available through improved technological ability. Player tracking in 2025 and the data related to it, for example, is on a different level nowadays.
How big of a difference that will make for the Vrabel-led Patriots remains to be seen, though. At the very least, however, he is not opposed to embracing new(ish) and emerging means of gathering information.
Player health and safety
“How do we manage our players? What’s the workload? What’s their speeds? How often to they get to 90 percent of their max speed?” Vrabel asked. “You see all these numbers that come out of the game. Let’s say a player’s max speed is 20 miles per hour. Well, then we feel like at least one time between games you should go 90 percent for a certain distance, so you should run at 18 miles per hour for X amount of distance if you’re a gunner, a receiver, or a player that does that.
“We can see what they do in the game, and we want to make sure they’re recreating that at least once in the season or once during the week. So, then, how we track player load management, how we construct practice, all these things that we’re going to use the data.”
Health has been an issue for the Patriots in recent years, and actively contributed to the team winning only eight combined games over the last two seasons. It goes without saying that not all of that is due to mismanagement, but the team needs any and all help it can get to keep the number of player injuries down.
Game management
“The final piece of analytics is game management and risk ratio of going for it, and all those different scenarios that you look at throughout the game,” Vrabel concluded. “Obviously, we’re going always going to try to use analytics and then make a decision.”
Using data compiled by rbsdm.com, the Patriots were the least aggressive team in the NFL in 2024. Opting to leave the offense on the field in only one of all four favorable situations to do so, the Jerod Mayo-led squad ranked dead-last in the league in go rate last year.
Some of that might have been due to Mayo’s inexperience as a rookie head coach, but the fact remains that the Patriots would have benefitted from a more proactive approach to game management. Vrabel does not seem to be opposed to that, if the numbers paint a positive picture. That alone appears to be an upgrade, though.
Ultimately, analytics will be only one piece of the decision-making puzzle. Still, Vrabel actively embracing it as a coach oftentimes associated more with an old-school approach to football, is a welcome sign — and something that he might have learned during his one year in Cleveland.