This guy is going to be perfect for Mike Vrabel.
After getting fired by the Tennessee Titans following the 2023 season, Vrabel is back on the NFL sideline as the head coach of the New England Patriots. And I’m not a Titans fan, but obviously I followed them pretty closely living here in Nashville and I became a BIG Mike Vrabel fan.
The fiery coach is the kind of guy who makes you want to run through a brick wall. An old-school, hard-nosed coach who’s not particularly flashy but gets you fired up with his intensity and passion.
And I think he just landed the perfect first-round pick with his new team.
With the fifth pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, the Patriots chose Will Campbell, an offensive tackle from Louisiana State University who spent his entire college career with the Tigers before declaring for the draft. During his time at LSU, Campbell was first team All-SEC, a consensus All-American, and in 2024 he won the Jacobs Trophy for the top lineman in the SEC. Just a hard-edged blocker that’ll be perfect for a team like the Patriots that need a ton of help on the offensive line.
Campbell immediately won over Pats fans with his teary interview after being drafted, when asked what kind of tone he hoped to set for the offensive line when it comes to protecting quarterback Drake Maye:
“I’m gonna fight and die to protect him with everything I got.”
Talk about getting you fired up.
But during his interview with ESPN, it was Maye’s accent that got everybody’s attention – and immediately began drawing comparisons to Forrest Gump:
I love it.
Of course Forrest Gump was from Mobile, Alabama, while Campbell is from Monroe, Louisiana. And as someone who used to live in Louisiana I can tell you that he sounds exactly like pretty much everybody else down there, and those are the kind of people you want on your side when you suit up for battle.
And Campbell couldn’t stop talking about what it meant to him to be drafted by the Patriots:
“That logo speaks for itself, but Coach Vrabel is a guy who I want to play for. He’s a football guy, no BS, and I’ve loved everything that everybody in that building’s about since the first time I stepped in there. So it’s a complete honor to be able to have this hat on right now.”
For his part, Vrabel sounded equally excited (but much less Cajun) in his comments on Campbell, calling it a “very easy pick” and saying that their new offensive tackle is going to be a “foundational piece” of the team going forward.
As much as I hate the Patriots, sounds like they got themselves a great pick.
