Five games into this new regime, it’s pretty clear that Bob Kraft made a great move when he admitted Jerod Mayo was a mistake and switched to Vrabel at the end of Mayo’s single season as head coach in Foxborough.

It couldn’t have been easy. Kraft’s ego is bigger than Gillette’s new lighthouse, and he probably wanted to honor the commitment he made to Mayo and give the neophyte coach a second chance.

But the Patriots owner didn’t do that. He fired Mayo before dinnertime after their 4-13 season ended Jan. 5, then brought family member Vrabel back into the fold.

Genius move.

Everything is different now. The Patriots have a serious NFL leader; a guy who has been an NFL Coach of the Year and has coached in a conference championship game. Head coach of the Titans for six seasons, Vrabel beat Belichick twice in four head-to-head meetings, including a playoff game at Foxborough in January 2020 that ended up being Tom Brady’s last game as a Patriot.

Vrabel is authentic, fair, tough, and smart. He loves players the way Bill Parcells loves players. We’ve seen him mix it up with linemen in practice, get his face bloodied diving into a scrimmage skirmish, and sprint down the sideline when Antonio Gibson returned a kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown in Miami.

New England’s coach told NBC that he hates Tuesdays at Gillette because that’s the day players don’t come into the building.

But he doesn’t let them walk all over him. He’s got their respect. And he’s made the Patriots respected around the league again.

The afterglow of Sunday’s prime-time upset of the Super Bowl-favorite Bills has not dimmed. This doesn’t mean the Patriots are going to beat the Saints in New Orleans this Sunday.

But they’re a fun watch again. And they have a coach who knows what he’s doing.

⋅ Quiz: 1. Name four NFL quarterbacks who have rushed for more than 5,000 career yards; 2. The Mets have never had a league MVP. Name four Mets who finished second in MVP voting.

⋅ Did it jump out at anybody else when Alex Bregman looked into the cameras after the Red Sox season ended and said, “It was an honor to put on this jersey.” Was? That sounds like a guy who is going to opt out, which is what all Scott Boras clients do.

⋅ While Sam Kennedy and Craig Breslow were risking rotator cuff tears patting themselves on the back during the Sox’ annual end-of-season news conference, Mookie Betts was warming up to make one of MLB’s greatest defensive plays since Derek Jeter’s shovel pass to home plate while playing shortstop against the A’s in the 2001 ALDS. Go find it online. Shortstop Betts, alert at every position he’s ever played, executes baseball’s ancient “wheel play,” dashing from second base to third, ahead of Phillies plough horse Nick Castellanos, taking a throw from third baseman Max Muncy, who’d fielded a nice sacrifice bunt attempt by Bryson Stott. It’s pure baseball ballet, one more reminder of how badly the Red Sox blew it when they failed to compete for Betts’s services and salary-dumped him to the Dodgers five years (and two rings) ago.

⋅ Watching MLB teams still playing, I wonder why none of them throw a steady diet of “sweepers,” the preferred pitch of the Red Sox? Are the Sox just smarter than all the other teams?

⋅ The Red Sox blew two great chances to trade Jarren Duran when his value was sky high. The Sox could have fetched a bundle for Duran after his breakout 2024 season (.285, 21 HRs, 75 RBIs, 14 triples, 34 steals) but resisted offers. The same thing happened at this year’s trade deadline. Duran is still a valuable player (not a free agent till after 2028), but he’s 29 and just submitted a horrible postseason that will dent his value. The Sox have four starting outfielders — Duran, Roman Anthony, Ceddanne Rafaela, and Wilyer Abreu — and hardly any infielders. They hurt themselves by waiting too long on Duran.

⋅ A lot of Red Sox fans wonder why they didn’t draft Walpole’s Cam Schlittler, the 6-foot-6-inch righthander who stuffed Boston with eight innings of 12 strikeouts (11 pitchers at or above 100 miles per hour) and no walks in the Yankees’ 4-0 win in the winner-take-all Game 3 of the Wild Card Series at Yankee Stadium Oct. 2. Professional baseball scouting and drafting is a wildly imprecise science. No team consistently gets it right. There are legions of high draft picks who never saw a day in the big leagues, just as the Baseball Encyclopedia is peppered with names of players who were never drafted but carved out brilliant careers. This isn’t like basketball, football or hockey, where the top guys are fairly obvious and hardly anybody gets overlooked. All that said, it should be noted that the Yankees have a New England secret weapon in Matt Hyde, a former batboy for the Chatham A’s of the Cape Cod League. Hyde went to Michigan, where he was a batting practice pitcher for the Wolverines, then worked as an assistant at Boston College and Harvard. Brian Cashman eventually made Hyde Northeast Regional scout for the Yankees, and Hyde saw a lot of Dartmouth’s Ben Rice and Northeastern’s Schlittler before drafting them. Schlittler was a seventh-round pick in 2022.

⋅ The Seattle Mariners are the only MLB team that’s never made it to the World Series. Seeing them in the postseason against the Tigers this past week, I was reminded of the late Diego Segui, who pitched the first game in Mariners history, a 7-0 loss to the Angels and Frank Tanana on April 6, 1977, in front of 57,762 in Seattle’s brand-new (since demolished) Kingdome. Segui, who pitched for the Red Sox in Game 5 of the 1975 World Series, gave up five hits and four earned runs in 3⅔ innings of the Mariners’ inaugural game. The first batter he faced — the first action in Seattle’s franchise history — was a walk to Angels second baseman Jerry Remy.

⋅ The Athletic’s John Hollinger projects the Celtics as the 11th-best team in NBA’s Eastern Conference, finishing 36-46. Ouch.

⋅ Giannis Antetokounmpo-to-the-Knicks is all the rage in New York’s tabloids. It’s all unnamed sources and vague levels of interest, but the City That Never Sleeps is in overdrive keeping the story alive.

⋅ A hard rain’s gonna fall on the WNBA when the league’s collective bargaining agreement expires Oct. 31. The league’s been around for 29 seasons and still doesn’t get it. It can’t even exploit a bona fide national star such as Caitlin Clark. Rather than promote Clark and ride the coattails of a popular, sensational player (remember David Stern with Michael Jordan in the late 1980s?), the league bullies its superstar, pretending she’s just another player. Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier recently called out WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s poor leadership. The impending showdown over player salaries jeopardizes the league after decades of effort to put the WNBA on America’s sports map. A work stoppage is exactly what the league does not need.

⋅ How do the Jets do it, year after year? After all the noise about Aaron Glenn and the new regime, the Jets go into Sunday’s London game (9:30 a.m. here) against the Broncos with an 0-5 record, the only winless team left in the NFL. So far, Glenn has been Rich Kotite/Adam Gase 2.0.

⋅ Belichick is on the Woody Hayes track, and not in a good way. Ohio State legend Hayes won five national championships, 13 Big Ten titles, and 238 games, but saw his career end when he punched Clemson’s Charlie Bauman after Bauman intercepted a pass in the 1978 Gator Bowl. At this hour, Belichick is making Hayes’s final moments look dignified. It gets worse every day for the Hoodie. Belichick’s Tar Heels might be the worst Power 4 team in America. They are 2-3, but have lost their three Power 4 games (TCU, Central Florida, Clemson) by an aggregate, 120-33. They rank 128th in points per game out of 136 Division 1 programs. Belichick reportedly told UNC’s PR folks to ignore Drake Maye on Tar Heels social media in the wake of Maye’s sensational second half last Sunday. Then the UNC-Belichick Hulu doc was scrapped. Then we heard about sanctions against an assistant coach for recruiting violations. Then rumors of a UNC buyout. Maybe it’s time for Bill to reach out to the Jets.

⋅ Boston College football coach Bill O’Brien decided he wants a timeout from weekly radio appearances with WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show.” The Eagles were crushed, 48-7 at Pitt last week and play host to Clemson at The Heights Saturday night.

⋅ Speaking of BC football, those of you looking for a good old-timey college football read should get Ivan Maisel’s “American Coach: The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame Legend Frank Leahy.” Leahy was offensive line coach for Vince Lombardi and the “Seven Blocks of Granite” at Fordham, and took over at Notre Dame at the age of 32 in 1941. He coached BC in 1939 and ’40, going 20-2, leading the Eagles to an 11-0 record and a 19-13 victory over Tennessee before 73,181 in the 1941 Sugar Bowl.

⋅ High school football score from last Friday night: Greater Lawrence Tech 79, Groton-Dunstable Regional 57. Glad I wasn’t keeping stats for that one.

⋅ Happy birthday to Hall of Famer Jim Palmer. Fifty-nine years ago this past week, a 20-year-old Palmer beat the Dodgers, 6-0, in the final game of Sandy Koufax’s career. The Orioles went on to sweep the defending champs in the World Series. Palmer turns 80 on Oct. 15.

⋅ RIP Mike Greenwell, Red Sox All-Star outfielder, who died of cancer in his hometown of Fort Myers, Fla., Thursday at the age of 62. A lifetime .303 hitter with a sunny disposition, Greenie would have been American League MVP in 1988 if not for steroid-taking Jose Canseco. The “Gator” carried the division-winning Red Sox in ’88, hitting .325 with 22 homers and 119 RBIs.

⋅ Quiz answers: 1. Lamar Jackson, Michael Vick, Cam Newton, Russell Wilson; 2. Tom Seaver (1969, second to Willie McCovey), Keith Hernandez (1984, Ryne Sandberg), Darryl Strawberry (1988, Kirk Gibson), Francisco Lindor (2024, Shohei Ohtani).