Why Mike Vrabel starts each press conference the same way

If you have followed New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel this season, as he has led his team to Super Bowl LX, you might have noted something about every single press conference.

It begins the same way.

Vrabel will enter the press room, say hello to MassLive Patriots reporter Karen Guregian, and give her the first question.

It is a tradition that has continued here in the days leading up to Super Bowl LX, as we will see in a moment, but dates back to Vrabel’s time as the head coach of the Tennessee Titans. Before the Patriots took on the Titans, and Vrabel’s old team, in October ESPN dove into how the tradition began, and Vrabel’s relationship with Teresa Walker, a sports editor for the Associated Press in Tennessee. Walker has covered the Titans since they arrived in Nashville in the summer of 1997, and when Vrabel arrived, he began starting each press conference with her.

For a particular reason.

“This is a tough business, I think, for females. For women,” said Vrabel to ESPN’s Mike Reiss as part of that segment in October. “In breaking into this league. And when I got to Tennessee, just trying to get to know everybody, and Teresa, and she’s blogging away, always right in front and attentive, and I figured out of respect to her I’d give her the first question, and it just kind of stuck.”

When Vrabel took over in New England that tradition continued with a familiar face in Guregian, whose decades of experience covering the Patriots includes Vrabel’s time as a player.

“Karen covered me here and covered us here when we were players here,” Vrabel told Reiss. “So it felt like it was only right.”

Again, this has continued to the site of Super Bowl LX, where Vrabel and the Patriots will take on the Seattle Seahawks in a few days:

We do not know how Super Bowl LX will turn out.

But we do know who will get the first question for Vrabel after the game.