Nostalgia is Killing the New England Patriots

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

The New England Patriots wrapped up an embarrassing campaign on Sunday, beating the Bills 23-16 to go 4-13 for the second straight season. Buffalo rested most of its starters as it gears up for a playoff run.

If there was any game that New England should have dropped, it was that one. A loss would have given the Patriots the No. 1 overall pick in the 2025 draft, but they instead slid all the way down to No. 4.

A team that once went to nine Super Bowls—and won six—in less than two decades now can’t even lose correctly.

Change came almost immediately, though, as New England coach Jerod Mayo got the boot after just one season at the helm. It was a move that didn’t really leave any Patriots fans truly satisfied. Yeah, Mayo sucked, but owner Robert Kraft didn’t put him in any sort of position to succeed, either.

And that’s exactly why New England has turned into a modern-day cellar dweller. Kraft is doing everything in his power to hold on to the Patriots’ glory days, and it—clearly—isn’t working. 

Mayo probably never should have been coach in the first place. But he knew the “Patriot Way.” He spent years and years soaking in Bill Belichick’s philosophy, first as a player (2008-15) and then as the inside linebackers coach (2019-23). In Kraft’s eyes, Mayo was the chosen one, the one who needed to succeed Belichick.

Simply handing off the coaching job to Mayo now has New England here. In a dark, dark place. No coach. No top pick. No true weapons on offense. The team is awful, and the Patriots’ front office has no one to blame but itself.

So now the hunt for a new coach is on, and one name that has already been thrown around as a potential candidate is Mike Vrabel, another blast from the New England past.

Vrabel won three Super Bowls as a linebacker with the Patriots and eventually went on to coach the Titans well after his playing days. With Tennessee, Vrabel went 54-45 during his six seasons in charge.

A respectable record, sure, but New England needs to look elsewhere.

Clinging to the past to some degree is something that I’m sure we all like to do. Whether it’s reliving your half-drunken memories from college, hoping your prom date, who has gotten significantly more attractive over the past 10 years, hits you up, or thinking about that time you somehow had a triple-double in your high school varsity game, chances are the past is somehow sneaking its way into your everyday life. It could be subtle, but it’s there.

If you haven’t discovered it already, the only way to truly grow and evolve is by shedding the past. Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened, as they say.

So the Patriots better get to smiling. Should they turn to their past for their next coach, they’ll once again be jeopardizing their future.