New England Patriots
“We can’t sit there and be careless with the football.”
Mike Vrabel stuck by Rhamondre Stevenson’s side through the running back’s fumble issues early in the 2025 season. However, there’s one thing that Stevenson did in the Patriots’ Week 7 victory over the Titans that irked Vrabel.
The Patriots’ head coach called out Stevenson for how he ran into the end zone for a touchdown in the third quarter of Sunday’s game against the Titans.
“We can’t do this. We can’t sit there and be careless with the football,” Vrabel told Scott Zolak in the film breakdown segment for the upcoming episode of “Patriots All Access.” “We’re not gonna see it anymore. We’re not gonna start doing this. We’re not going to start becoming a team that gives the other team an advantage of whatever may happen.
“If they don’t get aligned correctly, we need to score. We need to make sure we secure the football.”
While Stevenson was able to rush for a four-yard score with relative ease, he appeared to let up and slowed down before he crossed the goal line. He also took a hop and stuck the ball out as he was crossing the goal line with a Titans defender behind him.
The somewhat premature celebration didn’t come back to haunt Stevenson, but it might not have been an ideal move considering his fumbling history. He had seven fumbles last season and three in the first two weeks this year, including two lost fumbles in the Week 3 loss to the Steelers.
One of those lost fumbles against Pittsburgh happened right before Stevenson reached the goal line on a run right up the middle. Stevenson didn’t stick the ball out on that carry, but the fumble proved to be costly as New England lost that game, 21-14.
Those two lost fumbles against the Steelers gave Stevenson five lost fumbles since the start of the 2024 season, which was the most in the league over that span after Week 3. Vrabel still kept Stevenson as the Patriots’ lead running back, but emphasized the importance of ball security.
“We’re all responsible for the security of the football,” Vrabel said following the Week 3 loss to the Steelers. “It starts with the person who has it, and then it falls upon the people that are blocking.”
Stevenson lost a fumble in the Patriots’ Week 5 win over the Bills, but he wasn’t disciplined for that lost fumble.
As Vrabel criticized Stevenon for how he ran into the end zone in Week 7, a weird trend in the NFL of players dropping the ball before running into the end zone for a would-be touchdown has emerged. Colts wide receiver Adonai Mitchell did that in their Week 4 loss to the Rams, losing the ball for a fumble and a touchback. Cardinals running back Emari Demercado did the same thing a week later in their loss to the Titans.
The Patriots haven’t been hit by that bizarre trend, but they might be if they aren’t careful with the football. They have been relatively more careful with the football as of late, though, with Stevenson’s fumble against the Bills being their only turnover in their last five games.
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