The Dolphins face a ‘very physical’ Patriots team on Sunday. How will they respond?
Tua Tagovailoa has never beat a Mike Vrabel-led team.
He knows it. Vrabel knows it. And Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel knows it.
The only question is, can the franchise quarterback – and the rest of the team, for that matter – overcome past shortcomings to beat the New England Patriots and keep the Dolphins from falling to 0-2?
“We’ve played against him and we’ve never beat their team,” said Tagovailoa, who is coincidentally 0-2 against Vrabel’s Tennessee Titans teams. The former outside linebacker spent eight seasons with the Patriots and returned to New England in the 2025 offseason. “So coming into this week, we know what’s at stake. He got his guys coached up really well and that’s an opportunity for us this Sunday.”
The hallmark of Vrabel’s teams is physicality. Put differently, they just play tough, something that has given recent Dolphins teams their fair share of struggles.
“They’re always three phases of effort,” McDaniel said. “I think his system defensively, for sure, is built from Bill [Belichick] in the New England days, but he has his own kind of vision on it, and it’s unified and it’s connected. I think that’s the standard that he held in Tennessee and that he’s carried over in a short time with New England. It’s just that they’re a well-coached team that plays very hard. They seem to play for each other, which I think speaks to the type of culture he creates.”
Former Titans receiver Nick Westbrook-Ikhine learned about this firsthand. An undrafted prospect in 2020, Westbrook-Ikhine worked tirelessly to make the team. Toughness, he recalled, was something that Vrabel wanted in all his player, specifically remembering a day in which the coaching staff had him do special teams, take all the first team reps and proceed to have him run nothing but deep routes.
“They were like ‘You going to quit Nick? You going to quit?’” Westbrook-Ikhine recalled. “I could tell this was a test. This has nothing to do with whether I’m going to do well or not. They just want to see my mentality.”
“It’s just something he preaches, really,” Westbrook-Ikhine continued. “It’s also kinda the type of person he is and how he played in the NFL.”
That physicality has caused Tagovailoa to struggle. In his two matchups against the Titans, he has completed roughly 58% of his passes for an average of 222.5 yards passing and not a single touchdown. Tagovailoa has also thrown an interception, lost two fumbles and taken nine sacks.
For context, the nine sacks are the third-highest mark behind divisional foes the Buffalo Bills (14) and New England Patriots (13).
“They have their tricky [Cover] two deals that they’ve played against us, and they found success and they kept it and we just didn’t make them pay for those,” Tagovailoa said. “They’ve done a great job with that, and we’ve got to find ways.”
Since Vrabel signed with the Patriots in January, he has sought to make the team in his image. New England already had a stud in cornerback Christian Gonzalez, who made an All-Pro second team in 2024, yet will miss Sunday’s matchup with a hamstring injury. Then came the high-profile signings that included Pro Bowl outside linebacker Harold Landry as well as a pair of Super Bowl winners in cornerback Carlton Davis and defensive tackle Milton Williams.
“You can see the blueprints of what Mike is trying to get done up there,” Dolphins offensive coordinator Frank Smith. “You can see guys that are very physical. They want to play an attacking branded defense. Guys that are working through the beginnings of their phase through the scheme so it’s going to be a formidable challenge.”
Luckily, the Dolphins have another former Titan in Aaron Brewer as a captain. The center has his fair share of stories about his previous coach: “‘Brewer is tougher than a two-dollar steak,’” he recalled Vrabel once saying — but what’s most important is how the captain communicated the urgency to his teammates.
“It starts early in the week,” Brewer said of the preparation. “If you know Vrabel’s mind-set, you know what type of mind-set you need to be in. You’re not going to be surprised by nothing when you get out there. If you know they’re going to be physical, and it’s going to be a physical game.”
“Buckle your [expletive] up and be ready to hit somebody for four quarters, two hours, however long it’s going to be.”
This story was originally published September 12, 2025 at 11:19 PM.
