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Last week, Mike Giardi of Boston Sports Journal revealed that he had been told that Tennessee Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk "might be unwilling to make" trades with the New England Patriots because she "continues to think too much about how" the relationship involving the Titans and first-year Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel ended in January 2024. During a Monday appearance on Boston sports radio station WEEI, Vrabel had an opportunity to respond to that claim. Mike Vrabel does not want to talk about Amy Adams Strunk "I haven’t talked to Amy since the day she fired me, so her name and my name should not be in the same sentence together because I haven’t talked to her since the day she fired me," Vrabel directly said, per Hayden Bird and Amin Touri of The Boston Globe. Vrabel led the Titans to the AFC Championship Game held in January 2020, won the Associated Press Coach of the Year Award for the 2021 season and went 54-45 across his six campaigns with the club. He was shown the door after he endured back-to-back losing seasons, and a subsequent report indicated that Vrabel upset Strunk via comments he made when he was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame during the 2023 season. "I don't want anybody to [take it lightly] when they go away from here because any time that you're associated with a Hall of Fame with an organization that has the trophies that this one has behind it, I don't think you take it very lightly," Vrabel said at the time, per Jim Wyatt of the Titans' website. "And again, I just remind everybody, don't take what you have for granted, especially what we had here." Vrabel guided the Patriots to a 31-13 win over the Titans in Tennessee back in Week 7 of this season. Multiple New England players later said they understood that victory meant "a lot" to Vrabel. Mike Vrabel addresses Patriots standing pat at trade deadline More recently, the Patriots declined to make a significant move ahead of the Nov. 4 trade deadline. New England then improved to 8-2 via an impressive 28-23 victory at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (6-3) on Sunday. "Everybody in the personnel department worked, and tried to be diligent. But we didn’t feel like just adding players to add players," Vrabel said on Monday about what the Patriots didn't do before the trade deadline. "There were conversations about different things, and those things didn’t work out. Just decided that it wasn’t the right thing for us, and that’s kind of where it was. Moving forward here we’ll have to — especially this week on a short week — figure out who we have, who’s available, and where we can try to add some players or use some players from the practice squad." Vrabel was referencing how the Patriots will welcome the New York Jets (2-7) to Gillette Stadium for a "Thursday Night Football" showdown later this week. As of Monday afternoon, ESPN BET had New England as an 11.5-point favorite for that matchup.
