What's up, everybody?

Welcome into the Next Pats podcast.

I'm Phil Perry.

Fantastic episode for you this week, a by week edition of Next Pats, which means, yes, we're going to still dig into a little bit of draft,

especially with the conference championship schedule on the horizon, the college football

playoff on the horizon.

We're bringing in our good friend from the athletic, Dane Bruegler, to talk about his

most recent mock draft and how the Patriots might go about building around Drake May this

coming spring. We also want to talk about

Drake May, everything he has done well and maybe one area of improvement for him, one area of

improvement for this offense at large as they face the stretch run here. And they think about

what might make them a better operation for their final four games of the regular season.

But we want to start out today by talking about mindset.

This has been critical to Mike Vrable's establishment of the culture and the standard

that he wants here in New England.

And so I found it interesting after the Patriots recorded their 11th win of the season,

easily exceeding the expectations of most, if not all, who covered this team.

Hand up, I had them for nine wins this year.

Looks like I'm going to be way off in that regard.

So I went in the locker room on Tuesday morning after they beat the Giants on Monday night, and I asked a handful of players

if they get any motivation out of the fact that no one thought they would be this good.

Is there any of the nobody believed in us sentiment that existed when Vrable was a player here

...