FOXBROUGH, Mass. -- When New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said "I do not think we have a very deep team" after Saturday's preseason game against the Philadelphia Eagles, he was highlighting why quarterback Drake Maye, receiver A.J. Brown and other starters haven't played in a preseason game.
But was Vrabel also sending a message to the front office?
"We are the front office. We are all making the decisions. We're all included in this. It was about the young guys we have to develop," Vrabel said Monday in his weekly appearance on sports radio WEEI.
"You can see that the players we kept out of the game, those are the guys. And we have to be able to find some guys behind them to be backups, to be the first guy in ... those are the things that we are trying to develop and I guess that's what I was referencing."
The defending AFC champion Patriots surprised many in Vrabel's first year as coach in 2025, when he was paired with executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf, who had been with the team since 2020 but elevated to personnel chief in 2024.
New England opens the 2026 regular season Wednesday Sept. 9 at the Seattle Seahawks in a Super Bowl LX rematch. The team concludes its preseason Thursday at the Cleveland Browns and Vrabel said he hasn't decided if Maye and the starters will play.
"These aren't issues. I'm not in a subtle context -- that wasn't that," Vrabel said Monday on WEEI. "They asked why we didn't play the guys, and [the answer is] we have to have everybody we have available and then continue to develop and see some guys that went out and played like they did on Saturday night to build that depth."
Like other teams across the NFL, the Patriots' depth has been thinned by injuries. Beyond that, Vrabel was asked why he doesn't view the Patriots as a deep team.
"Well, I think that when you look at how you want to be constructed, we have to continue to draft very well," he said. "We have to continue to develop those late-round picks, the guys we can find that can be interior offensive linemen, that can be special teams linebackers ... edge guys that you can develop that maybe haven't played necessarily this 3-4 defense in the past but that you're developing.
"That's just kind of where we were constructed and I think we can always work to improve that. You just know that through the course of the season you're going to need so many of those guys just because things are going to happen and we have to be ready to play games without those front-line guys. That's on us to be able to get those guys ready to go."
