Ben McAdoo spent more than 20 years coaching football, all of it on the offensive side, before Mike Vrabel asked him to flip. Now the former Giants head coach works as a senior defensive assistant, dissecting opposing quarterbacks and identifying offensive tendencies for a Patriots defense that helped fuel a 14-3 regular season and a trip to Super Bowl 60.
McAdoo is one of only a handful of coaches retained from Jerod Mayo’s staff. His willingness to embrace an unfamiliar role tells you everything about how Vrabel has rewired a franchise that won eight total games across 2023 and 2024.
How Mike Vrabel Built the NFL’s Best Turnaround
“Coach Vrabel runs a buttoned-up program,” McAdoo told PFSN on the ground in San Francisco. “He does a tremendous job painting a picture for the players of what he wants our football to look like, and then he holds everyone accountable, whether it’s coaches, whether it’s players.”
That accountability extends beyond lip service. The Patriots went from consecutive 4-13 finishes to earning the No. 2 seed in the AFC with a 14-3 record, their best since 2016.
Vrabel became the first head coach since the AFL-NFL merger to win 10 consecutive games in his first season with a team that had won five or fewer games the previous year.
The 10-game improvement tied the 1999 Indianapolis Colts and 2008 Miami Dolphins for the best single-season turnaround in NFL history.
McAdoo’s own transition illustrates Vrabel’s unconventional thinking. The theory behind moving a lifelong offensive coach to defense: McAdoo could help reverse engineer opposing offenses, telling defensive coaches what he would attack if he were game-planning against their unit.
“In 2021, I was in Dallas, and I was on both sides of the ball,” McAdoo explained. “I had a chance to work with Dan Quinn and Kellen Moore. Coach Vrabel worked on the other side of the ball in Cleveland last year and thought that it’s a position that can help.”
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McAdoo now focuses on breaking down opposing quarterbacks, identifying weaknesses and tendencies that Terrell Williams and the defensive staff can exploit. “You try to show how the other offense plays, the techniques they use, how they try to run their schemes,” he said. “You try to put some things together on the quarterback and how you can take advantage of the way the quarterback plays, what he does well, what are some weaknesses that you may be able to take advantage of.”
The results speak for themselves. New England’s defense, which collapsed to 30th in DVOA in 2024, climbed to No. 12 in PFSN’s Defense Impact Metric this season with a 78.2 rating, up from 66.1 a year ago. That 12-point jump, combined with a leap from No. 30 to No. 12 in the rankings, represents one of the most dramatic defensive turnarounds in the league.
What Former Head Coaches Bring to Vrabel’s Staff
The Patriots’ coaching staff features four former NFL head coaches: Josh McDaniels, Doug Marrone, Thomas Brown, and McAdoo. That depth of experience provides Vrabel with a sounding board that few first-year coaches enjoy.
“Our doors are always open for him,” McAdoo said of Vrabel. “If he needs to run something by you or if he needs some help doing something maybe that’s not in your job description, whatever he asks for, you do the best you can. You try to help.”
The understanding cuts both ways. “As a head coach, that not every decision you make, everybody agrees with,” McAdoo acknowledged. “When you have high-character people on your staff, you get everyone pulling in the same direction. Once decisions are made, we all need to be on the same page pulling that direction.”
Vrabel got there by straddling the line between holding players accountable for their mistakes and supporting them through their struggles. Tight end Hunter Henry described the approach simply: “Just told us our coach is going to have our backs, no matter what.”
McAdoo sees echoes of Vrabel’s methods in the Giants’ new hire. John Harbaugh, who led the Ravens to 12 playoff appearances and a Super Bowl before taking the New York job this month, inherits a roster McAdoo knows well from his time there.
“He’s got a great opportunity on his hands, a unique opportunity,” McAdoo said. “The job’s probably as good as it’s been in a while. He’s got a young man who can play the quarterback position. He’s got a left tackle. He’s got some good players on defense, a featured receiver. The D-line looks like it’s coming along, and really the O-line has probably played better than it has in maybe 15 years.”
The Super Bowl awaits New England on February 8 against Seattle. If the Patriots win, Vrabel’s staff of former head coaches will have helped deliver something their previous franchises couldn’t: a championship built on accountability that starts in the coaching room and works its way down to the field.
