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Is Mike Vrabel part of the Belichick coaching tree?


Apparition

does Vrabel count as part of the tree?  

83 members have voted

  1. 1. does Vrabel count as part of the tree?

    • Yes. He clearly learned things about coaching from BB
      36
    • Nope. Gotta be a member of his staff to be on the tree.
      47


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6 hours ago, -Hope- said:

point in favor of the "vrabel is part of the belichick tree" camp, lol. intentional 12 men penalty here that stopped the clock and likely gave us 10-20 more seconds for the final drive to tie it up.

He sure as hell didn't learn this from Bill O'Brien. 

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On 10/17/2020 at 5:00 PM, Kiwibrown said:

That is how trees work. 

Well done. 

Some people needed it to be explained to them.

On 10/17/2020 at 5:06 PM, Kiwibrown said:

Yes. 

But  Paul Brown and Parcells.

Technically, Walsh and Parcells are both part of the PAul Brown tree. 

Paul Brown => Don Shula => Ray Perkins => Bill Parcells

Paul Brown => Bill Walsh

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On 10/16/2020 at 11:00 PM, pwny said:

You’re not wrong on a lot of what you said. His interpersonal skills and straight knowledge of the game is different, but he handles a lot of things with a similar tact.

And the above quote is kinda the thing. He didn’t just become the leader of men as a coach, he was that under BB. It led him to being a leader in the locker room, and his presence allowed him to be a leader in the film room. He was behaving essentially as a coach; leading meetings, working closely with BB on setting the defensive scheme, being trusted to set the defense every play and being allowed to change play calls on the fly.

And one can really say that he developed those leader of men skills under BB more so than anywhere else. 

My only counter to this would be that I don't think these are learned traits - those types of personality traits are inherant within certain people. Some people have it (like Vrabel) and some people don't (BoB, Charlie Weis, Matt Patricia, etc).

Regardless of who was coach, this is who Vrabel was supposed to be. Sure, there is no box full of rings for Vrabel if he's playing for anyone else - but he'd still earn the respect of his coaches and teammates alike.

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2 minutes ago, ET80 said:

My only counter to this would be that I don't think these are learned traits - those types of personality traits are inherant within certain people. Some people have it (like Vrabel) and some people don't (BoB, Charlie Weis, Matt Patricia, etc).

Regardless of who was coach, this is who Vrabel was supposed to be. Sure, there is no box full of rings for Vrabel if he's playing for anyone else - but he'd still earn the respect of his coaches and teammates alike.

Exactly, Vrabel isn't who he is because he played for Bellichek, moreso Bellichek drafted him because of the type of person he is, which is the profile that he likes to draft moreso than anyone.

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29 minutes ago, ET80 said:

My only counter to this would be that I don't think these are learned traits - those types of personality traits are inherant within certain people. Some people have it (like Vrabel) and some people don't (BoB, Charlie Weis, Matt Patricia, etc).

Regardless of who was coach, this is who Vrabel was supposed to be. Sure, there is no box full of rings for Vrabel if he's playing for anyone else - but he'd still earn the respect of his coaches and teammates alike.

I do agree that those traits aren’t necessarily taught, particularly at 20+ years old. And that’s largely why I don’t think that Vrabel being a different person and having a different set of interpersonal skills precludes him from being under BB’s coaching tree.

And while I’d agree that Vrabel having a leader of men was likely, given his charisma, it wasn’t inevitable. He was a Steeler for 4 years before joining the Patriots, and he didn’t develop into that role. It took him an additional 4 full years after being on the Patriots before he was named a team captain, despite the Patriots routinely having 3-4 defensive captains a year through the early-mid 2000s.

It wasn’t until his 9th season that he got named a captain by his teammates, so I think it’d pretty safe to say that it wasn’t a complete inevitability that he would become that type of leader. it took him time to develop himself and take all of his personality traits and apply them towards leadership to a point that his teammates would accept him as a real leader. And the environment that he finally got it figured out was the one that BB created; in a film room where he was eventually able to lead there, but also the entire environment that the Patriots had; down to playing alongside Tedy Bruschi, Rodney Harrison and the other leaders on that Patriots defense took him from a guy who had charismatic interpersonal skills into one that could be a leader.

Would he have still been a team captain eventually if he stayed in Pittsburgh, or if he jumped ship to KC earlier, sure, its likely. But BB didn’t just sit back as it was happening. It’d well documented how close those two were while Vrabel was playing for the Pats, and how much influence Bill let Vrabel have not just in the locker room, but also in the film room and on the field. 
 

With all of that known to be true, I don’t know how we can write off BB’s influence on Vrabel as a coach to be “well he didn’t actually coach for BB, so it doesn’t count” or “if we’re counting Vrabel, then we have to count this player who never took a snap for BB too”. 

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7 minutes ago, pwny said:

With all of that known to be true, I don’t know how we can write off BB’s influence on Vrabel as a coach to be “well he didn’t actually coach for BB, so it doesn’t count” or “if we’re counting Vrabel, then we have to count this player who never took a snap for BB too”. 

Between this discussion and the discussion on tree structure, I'm willing to walk back some of my stances.

I still don't believe Vrabel is a direct branch - he could be viewed as an indirect branch attached via the BoB branch - but these are all compelling arguments that I couldn't really argue against.

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