The one place to start out is the closet.
The darkish wood door inside a gathering room at Ohio State’s soccer facility, and the empty area behind it, seven ft lengthy and three huge.
That is the place John Streicher walked in, laid down, slept lots of of instances, and over time, the person they now name “Stretch” walked out.
That is the place Mike Vrabel says he first discovered him, then an unpaid teaching intern who lived there beginning in 2012, out of pure hustle and love of the sport.
“I stated, ‘Who’re you?’” the Patriots head coach remembered from his workplace in late July. “And he stated, ‘Stretch.’ And I instructed him, ‘Nicely, time to get to work.’”
In these days, Stretch reduce video. He created shows for. He studied movie, chauffeured recruits and mainly the rest Ohio State assistants, like Vrabel, requested of him. All of his garments hung in a few lockers. His meals saved heat within the staff cafeteria.
Of the thousands and thousands of people that ever claimed to dwell, breathe and sleep Ohio State soccer, Stretch is the one one who instructed the reality, due to that closet. However don’t spend a lot time there.
Tales just like the closest, about inglorious grunt work and unusual sacrifice, are in all places within the NFL; tales that calcify with every retelling till the reality of this coach or that government’s rise turns into inseparable from fable.
In January, Vrabel employed Streicher to be the Patriots’ vice president of football operations and strategy as a result of within the 11 years since he left Ohio State, sure, he has labored and misplaced and did sleep in that closet. However immediately he walks the halls as Stretch, probably the most highly effective particular person within the group underneath Vrabel, as a result of he wields extra reality than anybody else.
And the reality of the closet isn’t solely might a younger Stretch hardly afford to sleep wherever else however … he favored it.
“He used to pleasure himself on telling me his solely invoice was his cellphone invoice,” stated Tom Stewart, a longtime confidant and retired adjunct professor at Ohio State.
One last item in regards to the closet: Vrabel fibbed.
They met in 2011, Vrabel’s first season in coaching and Stretch’s final as an undergraduate tools supervisor. His model of how they met might be a joke he tells himself, and if that’s the case, one he positively shares with Stretch.
Smart guys. Shut buddies. Companions who’ve begun to remake the Patriots in Vrabel’s picture, simply as they did with the Titans from 2018-23.
So, right here is the reality about Stretch.
He’s 35. He stands at 6-foot-7, the inspiration for his nickname. He has blue eyes and brief brown hair he’s tried to maintain in place for years, which now grays at his temples.
He’s low cost, driving the identical Hyundai sedan he owned in school and ordering the least costly mild beer off most bar menus. He’s quiet, however affable, and observant. Associates and former colleagues know he’s smarter than they’re, and observe he tends to cover his intelligence from strangers.
Stretch touches each division within the Patriots’ soccer operations, but hardly ever leaves fingerprints. He handles analytics and recreation administration on Sundays. He scouts opponents, school prospects and professional gamers, a voice within the staff’s free company and draft plans. The Patriots’ athletic coaching, journey, tools and safety staffs all report back to him.
Via his first six months in New England, Stretch has been described as an advanced model of Ernie Adams, the one-time consigliere to Bill Belichick. Attempt once more.
“There’s possession, there’s Vrabel, after which Stretch,” one supply stated.
Had he accepted an interview request for this story, Stretch might need commented on the Patriots’ new energy construction or one other story from his Ohio State days. However he declined.
Too unhealthy. That story is nearly too good to be true.
Historical past and a house
In November 2013, an instantaneous basic reached its tipping level on a cold afternoon at Michigan Stadium, with 113,511 followers, at full throat and full tilt, bearing witness to varsity soccer historical past.
Ohio State led 42-41 with a minute left after coming into as two-touchdown favorites underneath legendary coach City Meyer. The Buckeyes had been undefeated that 12 months, chasing a nationwide title. Michigan had dropped 4 of its final six video games, however mustered sufficient trickery and perception to maintain tempo and now, sufficient gall to strive a 2-point conversion that might clinch the sport.
Again then, Stretch sat within the visiting coaches’ sales space of the press field subsequent to his direct boss, Ohio State co-defensive coordinator Everett Withers. Seconds after Michigan’s offense broke into formation, Meyer referred to as timeout from an anxious sideline.
“City was on the headset type of panicking,” remembered Parker Fleming, then a scholar coach and now an assistant at Oregon.
Not Stretch. He had a premonition and introduced it within the coaches’ field.
“What? Say that once more,” Withers begged.
This time, Stretch leaned into Withers’ headset so he might relay to the coaches down on the sideline a bit of intel that might briefly save their season.
This was the gist: Michigan had referred to as an analogous formation and movement 10 weeks in the past earlier than throwing a game-winning, 4-yard landing within the fourth quarter in opposition to Notre Dame. That very same play was coming once more: a go to huge receiver Drew Dileo, who had motioned earlier than the snap and would run a cease route.
“Are you positive?” Meyer requested.
The whistles blew, and play resumed. The house crowd fell right into a murmur whereas their Wolverines moved into the identical formation they’d proven earlier than the timeout. Dileo motioned over. Quarterback Devin Gardner took the snap, appeared proper and fired an early Christmas reward to a repositioned Buckeyes defender.
Ballgame.
In post-game interviews, Ohio State gamers credited assistant Kerry Coombs with a stroke of genius preparation. However Coombs was solely the messenger. Not that Stretch cared.
Soccer, not glory, fills his servant’s coronary heart, the place the Buckeyes have all the time loomed giant. He’s a west Cincinnati native and the one son of Jack Streicher, a former offensive lineman at Miami of Ohio. Jack launched his son to the sport at an early age, then inspired him to maintain his distance.
“He didn’t actually just like the contact. And I instructed him, ‘If you happen to don’t wish to get punched within the nostril and are available again, this isn’t the sport for you,’” Jack says. “However you may nonetheless like it.”
Briefly setting soccer apart, John turned to caddying, which he did for 5 years. In highschool, he pursued the Evans Scholarship, a full experience to varsity for younger caddies with restricted monetary means. No luck.
Then basketball turned his plan B, ideally a Division I scholarship that by no means materialized for Oak Hills Excessive College’s gangly starting center with a shiny 3-point shot.
By the point John pivoted to Plan C, an tools supervisor job at Ohio State, he floored the three individuals he was closest with: Jack, his mom Debbie, and Mike Worth.
At the moment, Worth remains to be the top basketball coach at Oak Hills. He’s old-fashioned, the kind of coach who says he’s seen all of it, and also you imagine him. And for all of the video games and practices they shared collectively, the primary reminiscence Worth summons of a younger John Streicher is a thin child volunteering at each single considered one of his youth camps.
As a result of whereas John had been well-liked at Oak Hills, he was reserved. He didn’t date and spent weekends at house or on the golf course. He, the tallest man strolling the hallways, was generally invisible. Whereas on the courtroom and inside a staff idea, John was his most seen.
So when he instructed Worth he was forgoing basketball to wash footballs and clear soiled shoulder pads, Worth paused. However someday later, within the readability of reflection, it clicked.
Soccer supplied what caddying and basketball might by no means: the prospect to activate his love of technique, service and his father’s recreation unexpectedly.
He enrolled at Ohio State in 2008 and have become lead supervisor as a senior in 2011, simply after a private hero, Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, resigned amid a recruiting scandal and an assistant named Luke Fickell took over.
Regardless of the continuing turmoil, John discovered a way of belonging and started to foster it exterior of himself, internet hosting different managers at his home after work days that ran over 10 hours. In the meantime Vrabel had retired from the NFL, simply in time to hitch Fickell, one of the best man at his marriage ceremony, and assist lead their alma mater out of the darkness.
Fickell lasted only one season on the helm earlier than handing the wheel to Meyer, who saved him and Vrabel as assistants upon taking on in 2012. Fissures fashioned instantly inside Meyer’s employees, cracks that might final for the subsequent two years
“Whenever you labored for City Meyer, it was chaos daily,” Withers stated, “and also you had been actually making an attempt to maintain your head above water.”
Vrabel threw John, now absolutely fashioned as Stretch, a life raft. Tuesday nights on the facility turned a ritual for them, the three-time Tremendous Bowl champion sharing conflict tales with scholar coaches and sleeping on an air mattress not all that removed from Stretch’s closet; exactly when and the place Stretch started cultivating and gathering tales all his personal.
‘He did all of that’
On June 2, the Patriots had been minutes away from opening considered one of their last spring practices on a sunny day exterior Gillette Stadium.
However first, interviews.
Interim defensive coordinator Zak Kuhr stepped behind a microphone earlier than a throng of reporters ready on the sting of 1 observe discipline. I requested him about Stretch, the towering man of thriller.
“He obtained me going at my first full-time gig at James Madison,” Kuhr stated. “My complete factor with him is I didn’t need to let him down wherever he put in phrase for me. So, I most likely wouldn’t be right here with out Stretch.”
Kuhr was proper. He wouldn’t.
However right here’s what he disregarded.
The 2 of them adopted Withers from Ohio State to James Madison after the 2013 season with a pair different scholar coaches, Parker Fleming and Drew Mehringer, and the way the 4 of them lived collectively in a home on the sting of campus. How Stretch negotiated his approach into paying a decrease hire by changing their basement right into a bed room, the place his future spouse, Caroline, would later stick with him.
The golf course behind the home, the place they’d run out to play three holes at a time on gradual days. Huddling over the identical telephone to name highschool recruits collectively. Bringing a projector house to check observe movie of their front room.
How Stretch based the Alpha Canine, a boosters membership that essentially modified this system, which went 18-7 throughout their two seasons and 28-2 over the 2 that adopted. How the Alpha Canine paid for a renovated locker room, new helmets, uniforms, coaching tables and expanded the recruiting price range. How Stretch organized this system’s current and plotted its future concurrently, all at 24 and 25 years previous.
“All of the departments that exist in school soccer immediately with 15 completely different individuals,” Fleming stated, “he did all of that at James Madison.”
Kuhr disregarded collectively these 4 20-somethings discovered the bounds of ambition, which left unchecked can ship you hovering and drag you into locations unattainable to climb out of alone.
Like when Mehringer stared on the staff’s 2-3 begin of their first season, a 26-year-old offensive coordinator internalizing his offense’s failures. Stretch insisted to him, each within the workplace and again at house, the season would straighten out. That they’d discover a approach.
JMU gained its subsequent seven video games and made the FCS playoffs. Their successful streak began with a wet, last-second triumph at Albany saved by Stretch’s advice to kick a discipline purpose earlier than fourth down in case the snap was botched. That approach, the holder might spike the ball and kick once more.
In fact, with 10 seconds left in a tied recreation, the snap was botched. JMU survived, kicked once more and gained.
“See? We’re good!” Stretch instructed Mehringer. “I instructed you. I instructed you.”
Or the time Stretch fell right into a small pit of his personal, cursing himself on a weekend his dad and mom visited as a result of he’d left a preeminent program like Ohio State for slightly outpost within the Appalachians. How he was supposedly on a path to nowhere. That’s, till Caroline prolonged a loving hand and pulled him again to his senses.
How moments like that each one handed, as all of them do, and Withers parlayed all of his triumphs at JMU into the top job at Texas State, the place Stretch and Kuhr adopted him in 2016, however successful didn’t.
And eventually, how Vrabel had develop into a Texans assistant in these years and as soon as requested Stretch if he might poach him upon touchdown an NFL head-coaching job. How Vrabel did land a job and stepped out of a recruiting go to to Boston School together with his eldest son, Tyler, to take a name from the Titans in January 2018.
How Vrabel hung up after which made two calls himself.
The primary to his spouse, and the second to Stretch.
Reunited, torn aside
On Jan. 4, 2020, Stretch celebrated his thirtieth birthday by laying the Patriots’ dynasty down into its grave.
He sat excessive above the Gillette Stadium discipline that night time, peering by means of the night time fog from the visiting coaches sales space with a direct line to Vrabel. No premonitions. Simply chilly, calculated clock-killing.
The Titans led by a degree halfway by means of the fourth quarter of a bruising Wild Card playoff battle, after they ready to punt the ball again to Tom Brady; the beginning traces of numerous NFL horror tales. However as an alternative of booming the ball away, Stretch and Vrabel initiated a plan to strip the Brady-era Pats of their scarcest useful resource: time.
With out working a single play, they sapped 1:49 off the clock. Then, lastly, they punted.
Not lengthy after, Brady was helpless on his last snap as a Patriot, standing on the 1-yard line with 9 seconds left partially due to that maneuver, which Stretch had stolen from Brady’s head coach and turned in opposition to them each.
Earlier that season, Invoice Belichick had exploited a loophole within the NFL rulebook by committing consecutive penalties that saved the clock working for an additional minute and a half late in a 33-0 blowout of the Jets. Belichick smirked that night time on the sideline as he skewered a hated rival on nationwide TV simply because he might.
The following day, down in Tennessee, Stretch studied that movie and filed Belichick’s loophole away, possible with Titans heart Ben Jones proper subsequent to him. Of their years collectively, Jones would often seize a espresso within the staff facility someday between 5 and 6 a.m., stroll over from the offensive line room and sit with Stretch in his cubicle subsequent to Vrabel’s workplace.
That is what Jones noticed and heard.
Stretch would take each order Vrabel barked by means of his open workplace door. He would research each play of each common season recreation inside 48 hours of its completion for six years straight. He would sew video clips of performs from throughout the league to cap the Titans’ Friday staff conferences with situational breakdowns. Friday train tape, they referred to as it.
He additionally reviewed how referees officiating the Titans’ subsequent recreation enforced penalties; similar to offensive go interference and whether or not they flagged it solely when receivers shoved defenders at chest top or decrease on the physique, too.
“Good groups know the foundations, nice groups know tips on how to use the foundations,” Jones stated. “So we did every thing potential. And each different staff I’ve been on, we by no means checked out something like that. We simply put in our recreation plan that week, and that was it.”
Typically over their morning chats, Stretch would make requests of his personal.
Speak to this rookie. He’s hitting a wall.
Test in with this veteran. He had unhealthy physique language yesterday.
Inform me what you assume we’d like this week.
Stretch was an extension of Vrabel then, as he’s immediately. He would additionally take heed to gamers aside from Jones vent about their boss, most complaints going unaired.
“Folks belief the s— out of him,” Vrabel stated. “The gamers know if they are saying one thing to Stretch, he doesn’t come and inform me. And I feel that’’s why the coaches belief him, too. He’ll know tips on how to say it to me.”
As Stretch’s attain grew, first because the director of participant improvement in 2020 and director of soccer administration three years later, the Titans fell aside. Their expertise pool ran dry over Vrabel’s last seasons, and his relationship with possession turned too strained for a coach who had gained simply 13 video games over two years.
Vrabel was fired, together with the remainder of his employees, on Jan. 9, 2024.
Within the following days, Vrabel started making calls across the league to pitch Stretch to anybody who would hear.
“He’s helped us win soccer video games,” Vrabel stated. “Level clean.”
Stretch acquired curiosity from a number of groups as a recreation administration guru, the talent he had develop into most well-known for, particularly after the Wild Card win in Foxboro. One of many final groups to name Stretch landed him.
A deal was struck about 4 hours after he picked up the telephone.
“Stretch,” the voice stated, “that is Sean McVay.”
The stamp
Hunched over a telephone at Rams headquarters in late July, McVay sounds sure of two issues whereas recalling his one season with Stretch.
One: Stretch made him, a Tremendous Bowl champion at 36 years previous who conquered soccer sooner than anybody ever had earlier than, a greater coach.
Two: sooner or later, Stretch will run his personal staff as an NFL normal supervisor.
Stretch needs this. Confidants shared the longer his NFL profession has lasted, the clearer his long-term imaginative and prescient has develop into. In addition they bear in mind a rockier starter to his Los Angeles tenure than he would possibly admit to, particularly given his fondness and respect for McVay.
The hours had been completely different from his Tennessee days, and his to-do listing didn’t run almost so long as he needed as Los Angeles’ new recreation administration coordinator.
“The Rams simply didn’t perceive every thing he had performed (in Tennessee),” his mom, Debbie, stated. “However I feel he ultimately labored himself into extra accountability than at first.”
That added accountability began with teaching on particular groups, then changing into a sounding board for McVay. The Rams began 1-4 final season, which pressured McVay to evaluate nearly every thing throughout his Week 6 bye. Stretch had just a few concepts.
Someday of their discussions, McVay started to embrace a brand new, holistic view of the sport; zooming out earlier than every matchup to contemplate an opponent’s historical past, teaching philosophy and the connective tissue between its offense, protection and particular groups. How he might run a program with extra connective tissue itself, as an alternative of 1 led by his insights as an offensive savant.
“I feel Stretch deserves a ton of credit score for collaborating with our offensive and defensive coaches, and within the kicking recreation, which allowed us to deal with a variety of these issues higher than perhaps what I had within the earlier seven years,” McVay admitted.
He continued: “How does this staff play? How do they need to win? How will we be sure that we don’t enable sure issues to happen, or we need to forestall them from having the ability to do that?”
Certain sufficient, the Rams began rolling, and gained 9 of their final 12 video games. McVay’s improved clock administration emerged as a prevailing narrative of their season — a nod to Stretch — however a storyline overshadowed his actual affect.
Within the playoffs, the Rams upset the Vikings and got here the closest of any staff to knocking off the long run Tremendous Bowl champion Eagles. The Rams’ teaching employees understood how Philadelphia needed to play: working the ball, controlling the clock and successful up entrance. That meant fewer possessions, which gave the Rams an actual shot if they may merely grasp round till the fourth quarter.
Win on the ultimate drive. That was the plan they repeated to themselves all week, and the Rams got here 22 yards and 26 seconds away from pulling it off, shedding on a fourth-down incompletion from Matthew Stafford to Puka Nacua.
As soon as he’d fallen 28-22 within the snow of Philadelphia night time final January, McVay knew what would come subsequent: a name from Vrabel.
Stretch’s bond with Vrabel is without doubt one of the tightest in soccer. Maybe the tightest. To say Stretch is aware of the place the our bodies are buried can be to miss the likelihood he might have been the one who put them there within the first place.
“It’s laborious to come back by, a man you belief always. (Vrabel and Stretch) have that in one another,” Jones stated. “And so they don’t need to let one another down.”
Greater than belief, it’s a relationship steeped in love and loyalty now happening a decade and a half. Which may be why, amongst different causes, Vrabel declined to elaborate on how Stretch would possibly sooner or later develop into a GM.
“Oh, I’m not gonna get into that,” he stated.
Let’s get into it anyway.
Above all else, the Patriots should win. No tide raises all boats and all profiles fairly like victory.
Second, Stretch should detach from the notion he’s an extension of Vrabel, even when these within the know notice the worth he provides has by no means been better, nor extra unbiased of his boss. Spending final season in Los Angeles helped. McVay’s stamp of approval may be probably the most helpful in the whole league.
That is that stamp.
“He understands the sport from an All-22 perspective. He’s particular because it pertains to the situational stuff, and he’s obtained a fantastic eye for expertise. And so you set all these issues collectively, and his big-picture understanding of the panorama of the league, offensive and defensive soccer and particular groups, schematics and ways, meshing all that collectively, he was a difference-maker for us,” McVay stated. “And I cherished being round him.”
Lastly, if and when the time comes, Stretch should bend the overall supervisor place to him. Taking a conventional method, learning gamers dispassionately and from a distance, treating them like belongings, gained’t do.
“He’s stated that if and when that type of place would come (out there), it might be laborious for him to be slightly extra distant from the staff,” his father, Jack, stated over the telephone. “He simply likes coping with them daily, being there and the camaraderie.”
“The belonging,” Debbie interjected.
Maybe Stretch will rise to the highest of the Patriots’ entrance workplace sooner or later. Possibly he’ll soar elsewhere. No matter Stretch decides or doesn’t, Vrabel would be the first to know, and that secret can be saved for so long as they need to maintain it between them.
On Jan. 12, information of Vrabel’s hiring in New England broke throughout the Streicher household tv as Jack settled in to look at a day of Wild Card playoff video games.
He texted his son asking if he would comply with Vrabel to the Patriots. That, after all, had already been determined.
Stretch replied. His textual content learn: “I’m employed by the Rams. I don’t know.”
Arms on the long run
The one method to attain Vrabel is to undergo Stretch.
Each males share an workplace doorway off a essential corridor inside Patriots’ headquarters, the place their nameplates are affixed at near eye stage. Stepping by means of the doorway, Stretch’s workplace comes first. It’s the dimensions of a modest bed room, with an L-shaped sofa and huge desk supporting two curved laptop screens off to the best. No closet.
Vrabel’s workplace, just a few steps additional forward and thru one other doorway, is sized nearer to a studio residence.
Stretch was gone after I entered to interview Vrabel the day earlier than Patriots coaching camp opened. After a fast handshake, I slid into considered one of two chairs in entrance of Vrabel’s desk, whereas he kicked his ft up, and leaned again into his chair. A spiral-bound copy of the 2025 NFL rule guide rested within the desk area between us.
We began with the Ohio State days. Vrabel answered my questions, a few of which he’d answered loads of instances earlier than. He confirmed he used to permit Stretch as a scholar intern, to throw events at his home every time he left city for his son Carter’s baseball tournaments.
He additionally omitted the one rule that’s been disregarded of each different story written about their relationship so far: If I discover one beer can, I’m gonna f—ing kill you.
We continued. Vrabel rebuffed the one query about Stretch’s subsequent steps to changing into a GM, however opened up about the remaining. Something for Stretch, he’d stated.
Towards the top of our 16 minutes collectively, I requested in regards to the Michigan story.
Vrabel put his ft again on the bottom and leaned ahead over the desk, extra bodily engaged than he’d been but. He jogged his reminiscence, a soccer catalogue of huge hits and larger video games.
It was laborious to inform whether or not Vrabel genuinely didn’t bear in mind the ending or was testing me. He guessed the flawed season at first, so I corrected him and completed the story. Vrabel smiled.
“And that’s how it began,” he stated.
We shook palms, and I thanked him for his time, turning again towards Stretch’s workplace.
Stretch was nonetheless lacking.
Seems, that afternoon he was off assembly with staff president Jonathan Kraft.
They mentioned the Patriots’ new state-of-the-art facility, which broke floor final December and is scheduled to open subsequent spring; a bodily manifestation of the franchise’s future.
Stretch is redesigning it.
