The Raiders finally got around to firing their coach on Tuesday. The Jaguars sent out a preliminary list of the candidates they want to interview. The Jets are just starting to bring candidates in.
The Patriots? They’re locked and loaded and ready to hire.
The Patriots have been operating at breakneck speed since the final whistle blew on the season at 4 p.m. Sunday. They fired Jerod Mayo less than an hour after Sunday’s game instead of waiting for Black Monday. And by Tuesday afternoon they already had satisfied the NFL’s Rooney Rule by holding in-person interviews with two minority candidates, Byron Leftwich and Pep Hamilton.
The Patriots are the first of the six teams with vacancies to satisfy the Rooney Rule, and can now hire a new coach at any time. But per NFL rules, it can’t be a coach who finished the season employed by another team. The only type of coach the Patriots can hire right now is someone who isn’t currently employed.
Someone such as, say, Mike Vrabel.
The swiftness with which the Patriots are moving through the process only strengthens the perception that Vrabel is their target.
Vrabel was let out of his job consulting with the Browns with a week to go in the regular season to get a head start. And he has been a hot commodity, interviewing with the Jets last Friday, and scheduled to interview in Chicago on Wednesday and New England on Thursday.
Robert Kraft said Monday that “we want to interview as many people as we can,” and the Patriots have requested virtual interviews with Lions coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn. But all signs point to Vrabel, the Patriots Hall of Famer.
The Patriots haven’t hired an outsider since Pete Carroll in 1997. The last three big hires — Belichick in 2000, Bill O’Brien as offensive coordinator in 2023, and Mayo in 2024 — all had previous relationships with the Patriots’ owners. The Krafts, I was told a year and a half ago, viewed Vrabel as their “home run” hire. Vrabel sat with the Krafts in the owners’ box in 2023 for his Hall of Fame ceremony during the Patriots-Bills game, while he was still the Titans’ coach.
There is little reason to satisfy the Rooney Rule so quickly other than to be able to pounce on Vrabel before another team does. No other top candidate is currently unemployed.
The Patriots couldn’t hire someone such as Johnson or, say, Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores, until at least after the Divisional Round, per NFL rules, and maybe not until after the Super Bowl if their teams make it that far. Those coaches can only do virtual interviews for the next two weeks.
But Vrabel is coming to town on Thursday. Considering the speed with which the Patriots are moving, he might be their coach by lunch time.
Meanwhile, the Patriots’ process demonstrates yet again the team’s core philosophy: Rules for thee, not for me.
For the umpteenth time, the Patriots are doing things their own way, not the way the league wants them to.
In October 2023, NFL owners voted, 32-0, to slow down the hiring process to force teams to be more deliberate and open-minded. Among the changes was a new rule preventing teams from holding in-person interviews with coaches who are employed until after the Divisional Round of the playoffs.
“If you think about hiring a CEO in a week or two, that would be pretty unusual, right?” NFL executive vice president Dasha Smith said. “So, it’s leading to a better process. The data shows that when you have a more intentional process, you actually end up with more diverse results.”
Just don’t tell that to the Patriots, who are zooming through the hiring process like it’s a race to the finish.
The Patriots also appear to be treating the Rooney Rule as little more than a nuisance.
They can’t make a hire until they do two in-person interviews with minority candidates. The Patriots could have satisfied this rule with any number of qualified candidates, such as Flores, Glenn or Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick Graham, each of whom is getting interest from other teams.
But the Patriots would have to wait at least two weeks to interview those coaches, and Vrabel might get scooped up in that time. The Patriots noticeably found two coaches in Hamilton and Leftwich who are unemployed and therefore could interview in person right away. The Patriots did put in a request for Glenn late Wednesday, several hours after this piece was initially published.
It’s another example of the Patriots making the Rooney Rule look like a mere speedbump to their desired result.
In 2023, when looking for an offensive coordinator, they interviewed three minority candidates who were not candidates anywhere else — Shawn Jefferson, Adrian Klemm, and Keenan McCardell — before hiring O’Brien. This year, they interviewed Hamilton and Leftwich, neither of whom has coached in the NFL since 2022, nor have they been linked to any other head coaching vacancy. It’s unclear if either coach is a serious candidate for the job, but it’s very clear that they help the Patriots check a box.
In 2024, the Patriots skipped the Rooney Rule altogether when hiring Mayo, though it didn’t gain much attention since the Patriots ultimately hired a minority coach. But one significant function of the Rooney Rule is to force owners outside of their comfort zone and interview diverse candidates they might not otherwise consider.
If nothing else, these interviews help minority coaches get their names out and create buzz as candidates, as Flores did with his interview with the Cardinals in 2018, which led to the Dolphins’ job in 2019. But the Krafts didn’t interview anyone last year, minority or otherwise.
Perhaps Leftwich and Hamilton will gain traction as candidates elsewhere thanks to their interviews with the Patriots. But if Vrabel gets hired soon by the Patriots, we’ll know exactly why Leftwich and Hamilton were brought to town.
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com.