The Cleveland Browns have been far from the NFL’s model franchise when it comes to playing winning football since the dawn of the 21st century; they have won one playoff game since their revival in 1999. That doesn’t mean everything they do is necessarily bad, though.
One area where the Browns stand out is their use of analytics. While it’s difficult to quantify wins and losses, their work in the analytical realm under general manager Andrew Berry has received considerable praise across the league. And with the hiring of Mike Vrabel as head coach of the New England Patriots this weekend, that could soon have ripple effects in New England.
Vrabel, after all, spent the 2024 season doing consulting work with the Browns. It’s unclear what exactly his involvement on the team’s analytics team looked like, but he mentioned Berry in his introductory speech on Monday. It’s not a stretch to imagine that he was at least somewhat exposed to Cleveland’s approach of looking at the game from a data-driven perspective.
We’ll see what that means for his tenure with the Patriots. On Monday, however, Vrabel presented a rough plan.
“We want to use as much information as possible to make informed decisions in real time, with real people,” he explained during an appearance on WEEI.
“Things change – the weather, the substitutes, who you have in the game, how their defense plays, how their offense plays, have you stopped them? We will always try to use this information. I’m excited to meet our staff here to see what they’ve been up to.
Vrabel mentioned three areas in particular.
Player Acquisition
“How do you apply analysis? » he asked about the Patriots’ player acquisition. “The numbers and the data, the speed of play, the estimated speed of play, all these different things that you can use to evaluate players. This is an area where we will try to use it.
Using analytics to determine which players fit on a team is not a new concept. New England has been making its version for years. One difference, however, is the amount of information available through improved technological capabilities. Player tracking in 2025 and related data, for example, are on another level today.
However, it remains to be seen what difference this will make for the Vrabel-led Patriots. At the very least, however, he is not averse to adopting new and emerging means of gathering information.
Player health and safety
“How do we manage our players? What is the workload? What are their speeds? How often do they reach 90% of their maximum speed? » » asked Vrabel. “You see all these numbers coming out of the game. Let’s say a player’s top speed is 20 miles per hour. Well, we think that at least once between games you should run 90% for a certain distance, so you should run 18 miles per hour for X distance if you’re a shooter, receiver or a player who does that.
“We can see what they do in the game, and we want to make sure they recreate that at least once a season or once a week. So how we track player load management, how we build practice, all these things we’re going to use data from.
Health has been an issue for the Patriots in recent years and has actively contributed to the team winning just eight games combined over the past two seasons. Needless to say, this isn’t all down to poor management, but the team needs all the help they can get to reduce the number of player injuries.
Game management
“The last piece of analysis is game management and risk reporting, and all these different scenarios that you look at throughout the game,” Vrabel concluded. “Obviously we’re always going to try to use analysis and then make a decision.”
Using data compiled by rbsdm.com, the Patriots were the least aggressive team in the NFL in 2024. Choosing to leave the offense on the field in just one of four favorable situations to do so, the team led by Jerod Mayo ranked dead last in the league in success rate last year.
Part of this could be due to Mayo’s inexperience as a rookie head coach, but the fact remains that the Patriots would have benefited from a more proactive approach to game management. Vrabel doesn’t seem to object, if the numbers paint a positive picture. That alone seems like an upgrade, though.
Ultimately, analytics will only be one piece of the decision-making puzzle. Still, Vrabel actively embracing him as a coach often associated more with an old-school approach to football, is a welcome sign — and something he may have learned during his year in Cleveland.
