FOXBOROUGH – All weekend long and into this week, the Patriots are the darlings of the national media.
Just a few years after being the hated villain, New England’s resurgence back to relevance is now everyone’s favorite story when it comes to national attention.
That attention only gets increased this week with the Pats hosting the hated Jets in prime time on Thursday night, looking to win an eighth straight game. Not only that, but the new ‘Nor’easter’ jerseys are also making their debut in front of 68,000 at Gillette.
It’s a good time to be a Pats fan, but inside the building, Mike Vrabel is doing his best to make sure his guys remained focus on the day-to-day process that’s gotten them to this point.
Nick Saban used to talk about positive comments in the media about his Alabama teams being ‘rat poison’ for his players. Vrabel was asked about that specific term on Tuesday when he met with the media.
“I think those are always hard. That’s human nature. We just have to stay consistent through our actions,” he said.
This week’s quick turnaround after the win over Tampa does allow guys to lock in easier.
“Quick turnaround, these guys were locked in, prepared,” added Vrabel. “There’s times where I want to pull the head coaching card out, stray away and run around here slamming everything, yelling. I really haven’t had to, where you try to make up, fabricate some conflict. (Monday) they responded. They did everything we asked them to do. Recovery, preparation, the walkthrough practices, being able to run and get some of the soreness out of them. They bought into that. Those are all really positive things.”
Vrabel played for a head coach that was all about ignoring the noise. Now, he’s doing his best to make sure all the positivity suddenly swirling around his 7-2 team doesn’t get to anyone’s head.
“We never want to take the cheese and get into all that,” said Vrabel. “Certainly, there’s a human element to it, but when things are going good, you have to be able to prepare for things when they’re not.
“I think that we try to do that, and we try to stay focused so that we’re not in any sort of panic mode.”