"When he asked me to come to the Houston Texans with him, he said, 'I'm going to do everything I can to get you ready to be a head coach,' " Vrabel said Monday. "He did that. He held up his end of the bargain."
The promise was reflected in the setting for Vrabel's recollection, which came during his celebratory introduction as head coach of the Patriots. That Vrabel brought it up spoke to an enduring friendship between two men that goes back to 2007, when O'Brien moved into the NFL ranks as a Patriots' quality control coach and Vrabel was one of the team captains. Now, with O'Brien heading into a second year revitalizing the Boston College program and Vrabel looking to do the same up the road with the Patriots, the area's most prominent football teams are led by friends who bonded in Foxborough over a shared love of hijinks, a shared sense of loyalty and, of course, a shared passion for football.
"It wasn't the easiest decision for him to leave Ohio State and come to the Houston Texans. He was working for Urban Meyer and I was a first-time NFL coach," O'Brien said on a phone call from BC. "I had been at Penn State, I had learned from Bill [Belichick] and other head coaches, and one thing I told Mike was that I knew he would be a head coach someday. It was obvious to see it.
"During his time in Houston (Vrabel would eventually become O'Brien's defensive coordinator before getting his own head coaching gig in Tennessee) -- not every day, but a couple times a year -- we talked about everything from scheduling to organizational setup to how it all works.
"Mike has a great mind. He's very, very smart. I call him a man's man. He's the Marlboro Man. I used to call him that. He commands respect. He played 14 years in the league and has three Super Bowl rings, played for guys like Coach Belichick and Bill Cowher.
"He has great knowledge of the game, but most importantly it's his ability to connect with the players. He's definitely developed an aura about himself. I think that's what the Patriots need. They're going to have a guy out front with him, with Drake Maye now at quarterback, that are the faces of the Patriots. I know it's been Buffalo at the top of the division for a long time now, but I have no doubt MIke is going to have them back on top in just a couple of years."
As Vrabel took the podium Monday, he was energized and eager to get the process started. The rubble left from Jerod Mayo's one ill-fated season won't be easy to rebuild, and in many ways, hindsight says Robert Kraft would have been wiser to go to Vrabel a year ago rather than his misguided insistence on promoting an ill-equipped Mayo. But there's a stronger argument to be made that the Patriots landed a better version of Vrabel this time, that the year away from head coaching (Vrabel was a consultant in Cleveland) is a net benefit.
"I realized that I missed it with everything that I had in my soul," Vrabel said. "I missed having the opportunity to lead, to help put a team together, a staff together."
"It's absolutely to his benefit," said O'Brien, who was fired early in Houston's 2020 season. "What it allows you to do, and I'm sure Mike would agree, is to go back and recalibrate and think about, OK, here are some things I did well, but here are some things I need to improve on. He went to Cleveland, saw another way of doing it with Coach [Kevin] Stefanski, who's been a coach of the year. It's a chance to step back and sit in the room and really observe and think about his next opportunity and how he'd be better.
"I didn't really do it enough, but I think it's something that all of us could benefit from. I recommend it to anybody that gets fired. Take some time off and don't jump right back in."
Every coach knows he gets hired to get fired someday. It's an ugly reality of the profession. For O'Brien, it's also a teaching tool about life.
"One of the things you realize in our business is that if you reach the head coach level, most of us do get fired," he said. "When you get fired, you think you have 100 friends. But you quickly realize you don't have that many friends. I think that's one of the things I know about Mike, of all the things that I respect and enjoy about my friendship with Mike, is that he's just a loyal guy. He cares about what's going on with my family, our kids. It's just the type of person he is."
Vrabel's Monday introduction was filled with evidence of those traits, from the shout-out to O'Brien ("He's a great friend, and I'm going to support Billy every way I can up the road in Chestnut Hill," Vrabel said) to the return-the-favor call O'Brien made later to WEEI's "The Greg Hill Show" on Tuesday. Identifying himself as a "first-time caller, longtime listener," O'Brien got a good laugh before Vrabel recognized the familiar voice.
"I was so happy when he got the job that he'll be back around," O'Brien told me, "that once in a while we can grab dinner, play golf. It's awesome to have him back. I think it's great for all of us that the Patriots hired him."