Mike Vrabel has focused on creating a specific culture during his first season as coach of the New England Patriots.
The tone was set when he first spoke to the team prior to the start of the offseason program in April.
“What my goal was, what I told everybody in the building … it was to build a program that you and the coaches and the staff wanted to be a part of, that they wanted to protect,” Vrabel told the team. “When you care about something, you protect it. And that you were proud of it. … You’re eventually going to believe in that and start to trust it.”
Ten months later, those words have helped lead Vrabel’s first team to the verge of capturing the franchise’s seventh Super Bowl title.
Vrabel is the eighth man to play in a Super Bowl and then reach one as a head coach. With a win over the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, he can make NFL history as the first person to win a Super Bowl as both a player and a head coach for the same franchise.