Patriots defense rises to Mike Vrabel challenge in second Eagles joint practice

The New England Patriots were ready to turn the page on their first joint practice with the Philadelphia Eagles almost immediately, but Mike Vrabel nonetheless made sure to hammer the point home. And not just that.

The second-year head coach actively challenged the team, and especially its defense, to come back stronger after what had been an uneven outing on Wednesday. Whatever buttons he managed to push by doing so, it worked: New England‘s defense had a solid outing on Thursday.

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For linebacker K.J. Britt, it all started with Vrabel’s messaging and how it energized that side of the ball.

“We had energy today. It didn’t matter who we played against today on defense,” Britt explained. “We can win a lot of games with the energy we played [with] today. That started from Vrabel just challenging us earlier this morning, challenging us last night. Just the culture here, how everybody wants to play football. It’s a football team.”

How exactly Vrabel challenged his team, Britt was not willing to share.

“I’d rather keep it in-house,” he added. “But Vrabel, he does a good job just keeping us on our toes, making sure that we get the best out of us. And we’ve got a defense that wants to respond to it. We’re not going to take it. We just want to build off of it and have fun with it. At the end of the day, we just want to have fun with it.”

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Fun was indeed being had by the Patriots defense on Thursday. Besides adding two more interceptions to bring the tally to seven over two days of work, the unit also showed some improvement rushing the passer and particularly stopping the run; after the Eagles had found success on Wednesday especially when stressing the edge, New England was markedly more sound against Saquon Barkley and company.

The Patriots will still be first to tell you that they have considerable room for improvement, but Thursday was still a step in the right direction. A step prompted by their head coach’s challenge.

“Once you come out here, your competitive nature is going to take over. And once your competitive nature takes over, you just play your game,” Britt said. “We got our eyes in the right spots today, and made sure that we were able to fly around and play ball.”