Image courtesy of The New England Patriots

It was just another third day of the draft for the Patriots on Saturday.

Sure, head coach Mike Vrabel wasn’t there as he continues to deal with his personal issue, but as far as operationally and communication wise, both Eliot Wolf and Ryan Cowden said it was business as usual inside the New Balance Athletics Center.

“Yeah, our focus – Mike and the organization put out statements about Mike’s situation and our support of Mike. I would just say, everything we’ve done up to this point, our preparation for the draft, has allowed us to operate in a manner just as normally as we would,” Cowden said.

“Yeah, I think it was business as usual,” added Wolf. “A lot of conversations with the coaching staff, a lot of conversations with the scouting staff. Day 3 of the draft is really the, I would say, scouts’ day. It’s the chance for some of these unheralded players to have the opportunity to get drafted, maybe some of the guys that some of the coaches didn’t even look at. So, I just want to want to thank everyone, from top to bottom, of our football organization. It was a really good process all weekend.”

While (understandably), both Wolf and Cowden referred to the two statements Vrabel put out this last week, Wolf acknowledge that while initially the plan was to keep in contact with him when needed, it was determined on Friday night that the team wouldn’t be reaching out to Vrabel at all.

“So, last night we kind of talked through things and made the decision that the time away really needs to be time away, so we were not in contact with Mike today other than some just, ‘Hope everything’s going OK’ kind of texts early this morning,” said Wolf.

Whether you want to believe the organization or not, it did feel like things really weren’t all that different for this regime on what turned into a busy final day of the 2026 NFL Draft.