FOXBOROUGH\u00a0– As Patriots first-year players and some fringe roster holdovers from a year ago were put through their paces at rookie mini-camp on Saturday, there was a loud voice heard on the upper grass practice field. There was no mistaking that voice, nor the energy behind it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mike Vrabel\u00a0was, on this day, exactly the same guy we saw last spring and summer. During team stretch, he suited up his right-hand man, John Streicher, with a blocking pad, making sure it fit just right. Later, he was on the scout team, playing linebacker opposite 7th-round pick quarterback Behren Morton. A short time after, the 50-year-old was hands-on with linebacker Namdi Obiazor as he and several of his teammates worked on punt protection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Different year. Drastically different circumstances based on the last month or so, but at least with the newcomers, it was the Mike Vrabel you remember.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s great,\u201d tackle Dametrious Crownover said of the head coach\u2019s involvement. \u201cHe’s a great guy, and I’ve learned a lot from him already, just from being here the last two days.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOXBOROUGH\u00a0– As Patriots first-year players and some fringe roster holdovers from a year ago were put through their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[206316,1815,349,8088,99,25712,169941,206315,169942],"class_list":["post-636451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-bedard-columns","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-patriots","tag-sports","tag-sticky","tag-sunday-notebooks","tag-top-patriots","tag-top-story-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=636451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}