FOXBOROUGH – The full Patriots roster hasn’t even gone through a practice together yet, but Mike Vrabel is already taking questions about something one of his players did.
A social media video has quickly made the rounds and gone viral, showing new WR1 (technically) Stefon Diggs partying on a giant boat with a bunch of women. That’s not the issue. The issue is that in the same video, he’s seen pulling out a baggie of what appears to be a pink substance and hands it off to three women he was sitting with.
Perfect timing.
The Patriots had their second open OTA (fifth total) for the media on Wednesday afternoon and Vrabel was asked about it right off the bat before practice.
“Well, it’s something that we’re aware of,” he said. “Obviously, we want to make great decisions on and off the field. We’re hoping that with our time here on the field today, that when we don’t have a script and we’re on the call periods, that we’re making great decisions.
“The message will be the same for all our players, that we’re trying to make great decisions. Any conversations that I’ve had with Stefon will remain between him, I and the club.”
When pressed on the issue and the fact that there was video released of Diggs with the team last week, Vrabel quickly retorted.
“Everything that we’re going to do…is we’re going to coach the guys that show up at 8:00 a.m., the ones that say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a situation, we’ll be here at 8:05 a.m.,’ we’ll coach those as well,” he said. “This is a voluntary part of our off-season program. Every player that’s not here, which there aren’t many, have been in communication with me and their position coaches.”
The key word is voluntary, but as far as optics go, it’s not an ideal situation from a guy this team – and Drake Maye in particular – may be relying on extremely heavily.
If Diggs is going to be the leader of a very young receiver room that showed its immaturity last season, he’s off to a tough start with this. Anything he may have done inside the building whenever he was with his new teammates suddenly gets overshadowed if and when they have to start answering questions about him. Vrabel certainly didn’t seem happy he had to answer the questions and with such an emphasis on building a strong culture and a good locker room in the offseason, this is just an unnecessary distraction when the team should be solely focused on improving the product that’s on the field.
The team doesn’t have mandatory minicamp until June 9, 10 and 11, when all players must be there. We most likely won’t hear from Diggs until then – if we do at all – which means this could linger for a bit.
In the grand scheme of things, a situation like this in May of the first year for Vrabel probably isn’t a big deal, but it absolutely halts a lot of the positive feelings fans had towards the new-look team until Diggs shows he’s fully bought in and healthy enough to have an impact.
Otherwise, who knows how short is New England tenure might be.