New head coach Mike Vrabel, without much fanfare, has been cleaning the New England Patriots’ house when it comes to remnants from the regime of Bill Belichick, the head coach and general manager who presided over the franchise for 24 years, bringing home a record six Super Bowl trophies.
Vrabel even cut nine-year veteran and two-time Super Bowl winning center David Andrews and 10-year veteran long-snapper Joe Cardona, an active duty member of the United States Naval Reserve, two of the most respected players from the Belichick era.
But Vrabel has not purged everyone who played under Belichick, and in fact will be relying on the final first-round draft pick that the future Hall of Fame coach ever made to shut down opposing quarterbacks’ passing games.
That indispensable player is 23-year-old cornerback Christian Gonzalez, selected by Belichick with the 17th overall pick in 2023 out of Oregon.
Gonzalez Has Proven a Lock-Down Cornerback
After seeing his rookie season cut short by injury after four games, Gonzalez bounced back in 2024 to put together a second-team All-Pro season. Pro Football Focus ranked him 20th out of 222 NFL cornerbacks in its overall grade, and 17th for his pass coverage.
Against some of the NFL’s elite receivers, Gonzalez repeatedly proved he could do more than hold his own. “Gonzalez’s 54.5 completion percentage allowed was third-lowest among 33 players with 75-plus targets as the nearest defender in coverage,” reported NFL.com.
In 2025, Gonzalez will be paired with offseason free agent acquisition Carlton Davis III, a 2018 second-round pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who was a key member of the defense on the Bucs team, led by former Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, that capped the 2020 season with a Super Bowl triumph.
Davis spent last season with the Detroit Lions where he compiled a 55.3 percent opponents’ completion rate, nearly the equal of Gonzalez.
But who plays where? Will Davis take the right side and Gonzalez the left? Or the other way around? That’s what Davis asked his new, young teammate in an exchange captured on video for the second episode of the Patriots’ new documentary series, Forged in Foxborough.
When Davis asked him if he preferred the left or right side of the field, Gonzalez dropped a cool, five-word message on his new, veteran teammate.
“I don’t give a f***,” Gonzalez said.
New Patriots Docs-Series Episode Debuts
“At only 23 years old, (Gonzalez) is barely scratching the surface of his true ceiling in the NFL, and that should terrify every opposing offense in the league,” wrote Jordy McElroy of USA Today Patriotswire on Wednesday.
The new episode of the Patriots’ online, behind-the-scenes docs-series is scehduled to appear on YouTube, as well as on the Patriots.com site, on Friday, July 18.
The new episode, as seen in the two-minute preview released by the Patriots on Tuesday, also features Vrabel preparing his team for the upcoming season, in “mic’d up” footage taken from New England’s mandatory minicamp in June.
“There’s going to be good, there’s going to be bad, and then we’re going to come together and rip f****ing faces,” Vrabel tells his team.
The new head coach was previously a player for the Patriots who himself was signed by Belichick in 2001 after he was released by the team that drafted him, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Vrabel played eight seasons for Belichick, including on Patriots Super Bowl winning teams in the 2003 and 2004 seasons.