INDIANAPOLIS — Randy Gregory is eligible to apply for reinstatement to the NFL, but the Dallas Cowboys are not planning to have their 2015 second-round pick in the fold in 2018.
“We assume worst-case on any situations, whether it’s the money or availability, especially if players are facing suspensions,” executive vice president Stephen Jones said. “Obviously last year when we knew (Ezekiel Elliott) faced a possible suspension we kept extra running backs, assuming worst case. So we have to move forward, assuming that Randy is not going to be here. If he is here, obviously it’s a big deal. First and foremost for him if he could get himself in a situation where he feels like he could actually play football.”
Gregory has played in two of the last 32 games for the Dallas Cowboys because of multiple suspensions for violating the NFL’s substance abuse program, missing the entire 2017 season.
Gregory gave something of an update via social media Monday: “It’s not how you start. It’s how you finish. Patience is key.”
The Cowboys are not allowed to have contact with Gregory, who was the 60th overall pick in 2015. He slipped in the draft because of off-field woes. He played in 12 games as a rookie but did not record a sack. He played in the final two games of the 2016 season and had one sack.
The Cowboys do not play a role in reinstatement. That comes from Gregory and his agent. Jones said it has been difficult for the Cowboys since they have not been able to keep tabs on Gregory.
“At the same time we obviously invested in Randy and wish nothing and hope for nothing but the best for Randy,” Jones said. “I know he’s on a journey and I know he’s trying to get his off the field situations worked out and he’s certainly got a lot of skill as a football player. But first and foremost he has to get himself personally and his physical well-being off the field in a good place.”
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Carolina Panthers on Monday got younger and cleared nearly $6 million in salary-cap space by releasing starting free safety Kurt Coleman and defensive end Charles Johnson.
Coleman, who will turn 30 in July, was scheduled to count $5,150,000 against the 2018 salary cap. Releasing him cleared $2.65 million in cap space.
Safety Kurt Coleman was released by the Panthers on Monday, saving the team $2.65 million against the salary cap. Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
Releasing the 31-year-old Johnson, who signed a two-year extension last year worth $9.5 million, cleared another $3.25 million in space.
Coleman in 2016 signed a three-year extension worth $17 million with $7 million guaranteed. He originally joined the Panthers as a free agent in 2015, leading the team with seven interceptions. He had only four interceptions in 2016 and none this past season when he was named a team captain for the first time.
Johnson was suspended four games this past season for violating the league’s policy on performance-enhancing drugs. He was inactive for the playoff game against New Orleans for an unspecified reason.
Johnson didn’t have a sack this past season, the first time that has happened since his rookie year of 2007, when he played in only two games as a third-round pick out of Georgia. He’s had five sacks the past three seasons after having 8.5 in 2014 and 11.0 in 2013.
Carolina had just shy of $20 million in salary-cap space before the releases.
WEST HARTFORD, Conn. — If declining TV ratings are a problem for the NFL, its players would like to know what can be done about them.
NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith told ESPN on Saturday that he has recently met with executives at several of the league’s broadcast partners, including CBS, NBC and Fox, to discuss issues related to the game. Entering his 10th year as leader of the players’ union, Smith is looking ahead to the next round of collective bargaining negotiations and wants the players to have a greater voice in what he describes as the league’s “macroeconomic” issues, including the way it presents itself to the public.
“I think that the ratings information is significant and important. If we don’t pay attention to it, I think that we do so at our own peril, from a macroeconomic standpoint,” Smith said Saturday in an interview before his son Alex’s lacrosse game at the University of Hartford. “Certainly, I recognize that we’re lucky that over 30 of the top 50 shows were NFL broadcasts. But I think that you ignore at your own peril not so much just the decline in football, but the overall decline in ratings for most television shows and particularly sports broadcasts.”
Smith pointed to the success the NBA is having right now and a desire to find out more about what’s behind it.
“I think that it’s important to take a look at what’s going on in basketball, because for the most part, I think they are the only sport that more and more people are watching,” Smith said. “And my hat’s off to what they do and how they do it in the NBA. I think that you could make the argument that a lot of their programming is fresher, hipper. They do, I think, a great job of marketing their individual players, sometimes at a time when the [NFL] looks for ways to take their star players off the field. I would be interested in better understanding the relationship between the broadcast partners and the NBA, what that relationship is like, how they do their TV deals, their rights deals.
“But I think that, given the year-over-year ratings issue in football, it begs the question, ‘Should we be doing something different?’ And that might mean the restructuring of the season in a way to make it more fan-friendly.”
NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith is spending the offseason evaluating the issues facing the league and how they affect the players. Matthew Emmons/USA TODAY Sports
Pressed on specific ideas to restructure the NFL season, Smith said he would like to find ways to better feature the best games and maybe even eliminate some that don’t hold the public’s interest.
“You look at the ratings, and you see that marquee matchups buck the trend on declining ratings,” Smith said. “And you also know that there’s groups of games, and let’s just say preseason games to start with. … It’s hard to find a fan that wants to buy a preseason ticket or wants to watch a preseason game. So to me, you’re being intellectually dishonest if you don’t want to look at both of those issues.
“When you do look at playoff games, when you do look at whether they’re division rivalries or games that have a level of significance, those games are not only exciting and people still want to watch them, but those marquee games are still big-time, high-viewership games.”
He suggested a model with fewer regular-season games and another round of playoff games.
“It doesn’t mean that that’s necessarily what you’re going to do, but we are at a point where we the union aren’t going to be this sort of silent other third party out there who’s not involved in the business of football from a stadium, media, Sunday, offseason standpoint,” Smith said. “We’re just not going to do it anymore.”
Smith’s point in meeting with broadcast executives is to establish the NFLPA as demanding a say in vital underlying issues central to the future of the game. He has yet to engage ownership in talks regarding the next CBA but seems to be announcing that, once those talks do start, he would like to be addressing issues more fundamental to the game’s structure and future than the players may have been invited to discuss in the past.
“The reason I’ve reached out is because I’m interested in finding out what our broadcast partners think about our game,” Smith said. “And I want to make sure that we have an environment where not only they are providing important input but so are we, and that we’re all thinking about long-term viability rather than just short-term impacts on revenue.”
“I think that it’s important to take a look at what’s going on in basketball, because for the most part, I think they are the only sport that more and more people are watching. And my hat’s off to what they do and how they do it in the NBA.”
NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith
Smith held forth on a number of topics during a roughly 45-minute interview.
• On player health and safety, Smith said he wants to continue to looking at ways to incentivize coaches and teams. Smith said the NFL is very good at establishing punishment structures for players who violate rules, but less willing to look at the extent to which coaches and teams might be complicit.
“For example, if at the end of the year you have a team that’s got the largest number of penalties for X, Y and Z — unnecessary roughness, unsportsmanlike conduct — should we start considering what’s the impact on the coach stakeholder or the franchise stakeholder?” Smith said. “And that might include what impact that might have with them on draft order. Then you have a regime where everybody’s incentivized.
“Take a defensive player who’s coached or taught repeatedly that, if you can’t break up the pass, separate the receiver from the ball — and we know they’re being coached that way. When the incident happens on the field, if it’s too early, too hard or too high, there’s going to be a penalty and the player’s going to get fined and blah blah blah, blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, it seems to me that you’re still leaving out two other stakeholders, right? The coach that taught him to do it and the team that wants him to do it. And you don’t necessarily take into consideration that the player has not only been told to do it, but he knows if he doesn’t do it, he may not be playing and somebody else who is willing to do it might take his place. That’s a lack of aligned incentives.”
He also took the opportunity to take some further shots at NFL investigators who, he believes, have performed poorly in past disciplinary situations involving players.
“If it’s true that Mary Jo White is involved in the current investigation of the Panthers, I have a question because I know that she falsely accused players in Bounty[gate],” Smith said. “And things that she said to the press were either knowingly untrue or there came a time when we all knew they weren’t true. If it’s true that Lisa Friel is involved in the investigation of the Panthers, then I know for a fact that someone who ignored the conclusions of her own investigator [in the Ezekiel Elliott case] is involved in the investigation of an owner. Neither of those two things should give anyone a level of confidence in the integrity of the investigation.
“So at the very least, it seems to me that the league as a whole and their partners, the players, deserve to have the results of the investigation of the Panthers released publicly before the sale. And that’s simply because, if the premise of the personal conduct policy is the integrity of the league, why shouldn’t we have the same level of transparency that occurs in player investigations occur here?”
“What is happening there can most charitably be described as an anomaly,” Smith said of MLB. “And so, have I been talking with agents in baseball and with our brother/sister union MLPBA to look at what’s going on there? Absolutely. Because anomalies like that in a quote-unquote free-agent market are disturbing.
“We have economic mechanisms like the [spending] minimums. But hypothetically, if the anomaly that is occurring in baseball is motivated by the desire of some owners and some teams, it doesn’t really matter whether or not you’ve got an economic mechanism to prevent it. No economic mechanism is going to prevent a deliberate decision to affect the market. So my takeaway from what’s happening in baseball is that it reminds you at that times, people can make decisions or might want to make decisions that are, in the short term, somewhat self-centered but might end up negatively impacting their sport in a significant way.”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Mike Vrabel kicks his feet up on his desk and leans back in his chair. He still looks like an NFL linebacker, but he has the Tennessee Titans’ big office now. He’s breaking it in his way.
A melodious country music playlist, ranging from Garth Brooks to Blake Shelton, plays slightly softer than speaking voice in his office. Vrabel’s Boston College-bound son, Tyler, makes a tepid entrance. He’s up at the Titans facility at 8:30 a.m. on a Friday for a workout with Titans strength and conditioning coach Steve Watterson.
“You don’t seem too excited about this. You tired? Couldn’t go to bed last night,” Vrabel says before giving his son speed-training instructions. “Go work out. I’ll come find you. See you, brother.”
Tyler, a high school senior who has his dad matched in body measurables (6-foot-4, 260 pounds), exits. Vrabel smiles proudly, “He’s big, huh? They’re doing a great job with him.”
It has been only a month, but Vrabel is already at home here.
Vrabel, 42, has a unique and challenging job. He’s a first-time head coach tasked with being the ground-level CEO for the Titans, an up-and-coming playoff team that isn’t broken, has a strong locker room and a franchise quarterback.
“Everybody is going to tell us to win the f—ing Super Bowl and it’s f—ing February,” Vrabel said. “We all have to manage expectations, positively and negatively.”
There were grumbles from NFL assistant coaches at the Senior Bowl, expressing frustration that Vrabel was able to reach the head coach mantle so quickly.
It’s no secret that Vrabel’s 14-year NFL playing career, in which he won three Super Bowls and embodied the Patriots Way, helped expedite his path. His relationship with Titans general manager Jon Robinson, a former Patriots scout, worked in his favor too.
The Titans are counting on first-time head coach Mike Vrabel to take them from playoff team to Super Bowl champion. Mark Humphrey/AP Photo
But Vrabel isn’t about to apologize for his connections. He says he believes he’s ready for the job. Those who know Vrabel well say his presence, intelligence, ability to relate to players and unrelenting competitiveness will make him successful and worth the risk for the Titans.
“I love his passion for the game, his passion for players. Mike is one of the smartest guys that I’ve ever met. That’s why I’m here,” said Titans defensive backs coach Kerry Coombs, who coached alongside Vrabel at Ohio State for two years. “Mike understood players better than anybody I’ve ever coached with. He has a great handle on how to teach and communicate. There are people you encounter in your life that have that ‘it’ factor. He’s one of those guys.”
Presence, confrontations, brutal honesty
The Eddie George-Vrabel Ohio State practice battles were legendary. From 1993 to 1995, they competed at everything from wind sprints to 10-yard shuttles.
George recalls many practices having Vrabel as his blitz-pickup responsibility. Vrabel was trying to knock him into next week. It was physical, and they let each other know who won each battle.
“His motor was nonstop. He was hell off the edge. He was one of the great defensive players to come through Ohio State,” said George, the 1995 Heisman Trophy winner and leading rusher in Titans/Oilers franchise history. “Mike doesn’t back down from a challenge. He’s not afraid of being confrontational. He would call you out in a heartbeat — coaches, teammates. It didn’t matter.”
Vrabel figured he wasn’t the fastest, strongest or best player, but he could be the toughest. He learned that from his dad, Chuck, a longtime Ohio high school basketball coach.
“He embodied that Patriots culture. He’s a natural leader,” said 49ers general manager John Lynch, who briefly was a teammate of Vrabel’s during training camp with the Patriots in 2008. “Just because he was a great player doesn’t mean he’s going to be a great coach. But it’s important to Mike. He’s reflected that with the way he works. Knowing Mike and what he stands for, I think they found a good one.”
Former Patriots and Texans nose tackle Vince Wilfork said Vrabel was Houston’s best coach. Two others who played for Vrabel said he demands a lot, but he gets it from a player’s perspective.
“He’s willing to put his arm around you,” George said. “He’s not so insensitive that he forgets you’re a human being.”
That brings us back to Vrabel’s presence, sort of a fluffy buzzword.
“I don’t know what it is or means. I don’t try to pretend, I don’t try to be fake,” Vrabel interjected as if he had heard the word “presence” one too many times. “I can be an a–h— Monday to Saturday. I let them play on Sunday. That 3 1/2 hours is your time.”
University of Cincinnati head coach Luke Fickell, Vrabel’s best friend and former Ohio State teammate, predicts people might struggle adjusting to Vrabel’s brutally honest approach to football and life.
“Some people would say it’s brash. Some people would say it’s arrogant,” Fickell said. “No, this is the standard he’s going to set. He’s going to set it for himself, and he’s going to hold people to it.”
Fickell saw people grapple with Vrabel’s tough method of leadership, like when he wasn’t voted a captain at Ohio State.
“Mike was the best leader we had on the team. But it wasn’t a popular thing,” said Fickell, who also gave Vrabel his first coaching job at Ohio State. “He says things that people don’t want to hear. Some people didn’t like it. He found out at an early age that he didn’t care.”
Vrabel went on to become a multiyear captain and all-pro player with the Patriots.
“[Patriots head coach] Bill Belichick was brutally honest. [Ohio State head coach] Urban Meyer taught me to be brutally honest,” Vrabel said. “He was clear, clean, concise and direct. Sooner or later, you got to be honest. It might as well be sooner. In the end, players and people want to know you’re not bulls—-ing them.”
‘Vrabel was the smartest’
Vrabel doesn’t have much patience when it comes to his family. He used to get angry when Tyler’s high school football coaches repeatedly called out his last name as if he were his dad.
“He’s got a f—ing name,” Vrabel told the coaches. “I swear to God if you yell Tyler, he’ll turn around.”
Vrabel was trying to protect his son from the unnecessary expectations. He figures it’s not easy playing the same sport as your famous former NFL star dad. Tyler plays offensive line, which Mike hopes will make things easier. His younger son, Carter, plays baseball. His wife, Jen, loves sports and plays gatekeeper in determining who enters their lives.
Sitting on the back wall of Vrabel’s office is a collection of children books. Next year will be the 20th anniversary of 2nd & 7, a foundation Vrabel and his friend Ryan Miller started to promote childhood reading comprehension in Ohio. It started buying books for second-graders and reading to them. Then Vrabel and Miller decided to write books. Vrabel has plans to expand the program to Nashville by this fall.
Education was important for Vrabel, an only child, with a mother and father who were both school principals.
Once Vrabel retired from the NFL in 2011, at 36, he accepted a job from Fickell to be the defensive line coach at Ohio State the next day. He didn’t plan to leave Columbus. He built a home there that “I thought they would bury me in.”
Vrabel loved recruiting, and he was good at it — proving Meyer’s initial doubts wrong — but he grew tired of spending his springs in the homes of 17-year-olds while hearing Jen describe the awesome sports moments he missed with his own teenager and preteen.
“Some people would say it’s brash. Some people would say it’s arrogant. No, this is the standard he’s going to set. He’s going to set it for himself, and he’s going to hold people to it.”
Cincinnati coach Luke Fickell on Vrabel
So his coaching dream moved to Houston as linebackers coach from 2014 to 2016 followed by one season as defensive coordinator in 2017, and now Tennessee, where his family has a front-row seat. Vrabel thought back to when the Titans told him he’d be their head coach.
“I’ve won a Super Bowl. I’ve been on the podium with my son when he was 3 years old. Caught a TD in the Super Bowl. Strip sacks in the Super Bowl,” Vrabel said. “To me, it’s right up there with all those moments and probably a little higher.”
This opportunity is special because Vrabel wanted to be a coach before he was a player. Those who know Vrabel well laugh when they see people miscategorize him as a “football meathead.”
“Vrabes was always the guy who saw more than just what was on the handout. He would understand why,” said Bruschi, now an ESPN analyst. “All of us were smart players, but I always thought Vrabel was the smartest. Before I went to a coach with a question, I would check with Vrabes first.”
Bruschi remembers Vrabel as the only guy who could naturally joke about him coming back from a stroke while still matching his intensity on the field.
“Toughness and humor, a lot of guys can’t mix the two,” Bruschi said. “Vrabes mastered that.”
Managing expectations
The Vrabel-Fickell college dorm consisted of drinking, little sleep and wrestling until 2 a.m.
Fickell was a wrestler, but Vrabel wanted to win. So they fought and fought, often drawing blood and leaving bruises.
“I whooped his ass. He would never admit it. But he would never stop. You would have to knock him out,” Fickell said. “He’s probably the most competitive son of a b—- I’ve ever met. It doesn’t matter if it’s football, recruiting, playing cards for money, shooting baskets or in some business endeavor. He’s in it to win.”
That competitiveness is part of what attracted Robinson to Vrabel. Robinson wasn’t satisfied with being a “decent” team, and he says he believes Vrabel can push them toward “great.”
The Titans went 9-7 in 2016 and 2017, and last season won their first playoff game since 2003. Marcus Mariota is the present and future. This team isn’t broken. But it’s a lot harder to go from decent to great, with further to fall than to climb. The realistic goal is a championship.
“You can look at the Rams. Yeah, they had a QB, but they weren’t a playoff team,” Vrabel said. “This is a very unique situation.
“We’re going to have to manage expectations. We talk about winning the division, something that we haven’t done since 2008 here, hosting a playoff game, then seeing what happens.”
Before winning, Vrabel will have to teach his culture and sell his program. Many Titans players loved former head coach Mike Mularkey.
“His biggest challenge is going to be winning that locker room over,” George said. “You have to be careful with friction at the beginning. It can be a distraction.”
Vrabel’s experiences as a player — being an underachieving draft pick, a backup, a special-teams player, a captain, an all-pro player, a champion, a traded player and a grizzled veteran trying to hold on — will help him relate to his players.
His coaching experiences — swimming in his first year from player to coach, bombing his initial interview with Meyer in 2012, and becoming a hot coaching candidate over the past two years — have shaped him, too.
Vrabel’s dad taught him the importance of teamwork and toughness. Meyer taught him the importance of teaching a player. Belichick taught him the importance of preparation. Former Steelers coach Bill Cowher taught him the importance of special teams. Vrabel will take from them and add his own style.
“I’m going to treat each individual player exactly how they treat the team,” Vrabel said. “If they treat the team or teammates like s—, I’m going to have a tough time having a relationship with that player, and that player probably won’t be here very long.”
Vrabel’s first training camp might make some players puke. He’s that type of coach. But winning could make everything better.
One month in, Vrabel looks content with the challenge, comfortable in his new home and confident in his ability to make it work. One thing is certain: He’ll do it his way.
