Here’s a message for you, New England Patriot fans:

Don’t listen to those experienced voices at Gillette Stadium who want to caution you about the Patriots being a four win team from a year ago that is still feeling its way, blah blah blah.

Nope.

They’ve arrived. Everyone hadn’t agreed that the soft schedule was going to produce more wins. They hadn’t earned that trust.

But we’re telling you now they have.

They’ve found their way, just like in the immediate off-season, owner Robert Kraft found his coach. They rally around Mike Vrabel, showing cohesion like you havent’ seen in a long, long time. The win over Buffalo springboarded them to complete confidence. It was building before that with a rout at home of a bad Carolina team. Sunday they did again what you’re supposed to do, beat up on bad teams as they blew out the god-awful Tennessee Titans, 31-13. Three straight road wins, something no Patriots team has ever done in a three week stretch.

“And emotional game, an emotional stretch for us,” said Vrabel, whose name fans, presumably travelers from this region having a Music City weekend, were chanting at the end. “Somehow you don’t know how these games are going to go. If we don’t beat ourselves, it’s been a good product.”

The Krafts have to be thrilled to see their team get out of that four-win rut, now at 5-2, closing in on the halfway point.

Business will be booming. Sponsors will be knocking on the door. Restaurants will have Patriot watch parties, contests, etc., etc.

The Patriots are now being talked about again as winners. Fans are no longer giving away their tickets. Sports talk radio will be all Patriots all the time, maybe a little Celtics thrown in. You want Bruins? Wait for the specialty shows at odd hours. Red Sox? The equipment truck leaves just after the Super Bowl.

The Patriots bandwagon will be full.

The low point a year ago had to be the Saturday afternoon blowout loss to the Chargers at Gillette over the holidays. It displayed to everyone that that Patriots football as constituted then was a lousy, poorly coached product that needed big fixing.

Vrabel, if giving the power to fix it, wasn’t going to stand for it.

But he needed a buy-in. When did he get it?

“Probably after the Vegas game (a season opening loss) and us going on the road to Miami,” Vrabel said of that first win, talking about how South Florida is hardly ever kind to the Patriots. “That was really important for us and created a lot of postive momentum. .. We kind of dipped our toe in the first game.”

That’s just it, you can’t judge an NFL team by the first month. It’s November when you get an idea, but we made up our mind after the blowout win over Carolina.

Drake May is obviously the reason, but this team seems to have that huge faith in Vrabel,as the players were not about to let him leave Nashville anything other than a big winner..

“It starts with our coach,” Douglas said. “He starts with a speech, just about every day, before practice. … It felt good to see that smile on his face.”

“There was definitely some extra juice,” said linebacker K’Lavon Chaisson who scooped up a fumble by the clearly overmatched Titans QB Cam Ward and scored. “Oh man, great dude. …. Super grateful to have Vrabes as a coach.”

“He downplayed it all week, which we appreciated,” Maye said, talking like a seasoned veteran.

Look, any team can lose at any given time. The way Sunday’s game started, you were wondering if the Titans were going to be one of those teams that would get the temporary bump after a coaching change. Nope. The difference between the two teams emerged. Their defense stinks and Maye is a better player and is coached better than Ward.

“Just keep playing the offense, we’re learning each other, learning the offense together, getting more comfortable every week,” Maye said, saying his success is due to “the guys around me. We’re instilling confidence in each other.

We’re just trying to buy into each other and build an identity.”

Welcome to the 2025 New England Patriots. Gillette will be abuzz next Sunday.

Tom King may be reached at X @Telegraph_TomK, or via email at tking@nashuatelegraph.com