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Mike Vrabel is bringing some extra reinforcements to the New England Patriots' front office upon his hiring as head coach, adding an executive with ties to his Tennessee Titans days and a current member of the New York Giants organization.
Giants senior advisor Ryan Cowden has been hired by the Patriots, via Albert Breer of the Monday Morning Quarterback. While Cowden's specific title hasn't officially been announced, he'll have a “big role” in the Patriots front office and serve as the de facto No. 2 behind executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf.
The Giants allowed Cowden out of his deal in order for him to join the Patriots, NFL Media's Mike Garafolo reported Monday.
Cowden had worked with Vrabel for much of the head coach's six-year tenure in Tennessee. He was the Titans' director of player personnel (2016–2017), vice president of player personnel (2018–2022), and interim general manager (2022).
Vrabel had pushed for Cowden to become the team's general manager on a full-time basis following Jon Robinson's firing during the 2022 season, via The Athletic's Zack Rosenblatt.
“I was looking for a sound structure with a clear vision, open dialogue and communication,” Vrabel said.
However, Vrabel noted that Titans owner Amy Adams Strunk “wanted to go in a new direction” at the time, opting to hire Ran Carthon from the San Francisco 49ers instead.
What Mike Vrabel said of working with Patriots' Eliot Wolf
As Vrabel was officially introduced as the Patriots' head coach on Monday, there were immediate questions about how the front office set up would be. Owner Robert Kraft told reporters after he fired Jerod Mayo that he wanted Wolf to remain onboard as the team's lead executive, but there had been media speculation that a change could be made in the front office after the head coach hiring. The hiring of Cowden would also make it easy to wonder if Wolf could be getting pushed out of New England.
However, Vrabel's comments on Monday suggest that Wolf will remain the leading voice in the Patriots' front office.
“I’m just excited to sit down with Eliot and his staff,” Vrabel told reporters on Monday. “I’ve met more with Eliot over the weekend than I have … I’ve had conversations with him, but I need to sit down with his staff and figure out where we’re at, what we need to do. I’m confident that those types of decisions are all going to sort themselves out. We don’t always want to be on the same page. That’s not the environment we want to create. But we want to have a shared vision, and there’s also different ways to get there.”
Vrabel said he's “very” confident in Wolf's staff, in a separate conversation with NBC Sports Boston's Tom E. Curran,
“Having talked to Eliot … there were some things that maybe didn’t allow him to completely invest in personnel,” Vrabel told Curran. “I'm not going to be able to watch every player. I'm not going to be able to watch as many players as they will. I'm excited about them being able to consolidate that, to get me the players and get me in front of the players that we need to identify and evaluate.”
Vrabel also emphasized being able to work together with the front office at his press conference.
“I think the most important thing is there’s a shared organizational vision for what we want to do and how we want to work and how we want to acquire players,” Vrabel said. “There’s numerous ways to acquire players through free agency, trade, draft, post-draft process, post after training camp.”
