New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel offered an update on defensive coordinator Terrell Williams, who was away from the team last week dealing with an unspecified medical issue.
Williams will be “around and involved” the team moving forward, but it is currently unclear as to what extent.
“I think Terrell’s in good spirits, I appreciate [the media] asking,” Vrabel said Monday morning. “So again, Terrell will be around. I don’t quite fully know in what capacity, but he will be around and involved,
so we’ll continue to just make sure that there’s a good plan for everything that happens, just like we always have been.”
In Williams’ absence, inside linebackers coach Zak Kuhr called defensive plays during New England’s Week 2 win over the Miami Dolphins. Kuhr, who coordinated the defense this spring in Williams’ absence, was given a game ball by Vrabel after the win.
“We subbed and we got into our calls,” Vrabel said of Sunday’s defensive operation. “We’ve talked about this before, the best call is a decisive one that the players know and believe in, and that they have confidence that they can execute their job. And so, when we needed to get the drive stopped, we got the drive stopped. We had a plan to play these guys and how we wanted to play them.”
With Williams away from the team last week, Vrabel shared the situation was unrelated to the health-related issue that kept him away from the team during the offseason program.
As the Patriots now turn their attention to an upcoming matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Kuhr, who coached under Vrabel and with Williams in Tennessee, could be in-line to remain the defensive play caller.
“Having been an offensive coach, and I watched him work at Ohio State, and when we were able to get him to Tennessee, how quickly he translated that knowledge to defense, how quickly he learned defense and what an asset he was defensively for us,” Vrabel said of Kuhr last week.
“He did our red zone stuff for us in Tennessee, and then continued to grow, continued to understand what we were doing, and then watching him work in the spring, work in front of the guys and prepare them in the spring, and through training camp until Terrell was back, that’s what I saw. I saw a lot of maturity, a lot of growth, but also a lot of knowledge.”
