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DE Mike Vrabel (All B1G, All American, Pro Bowl, All Pro, Super Bowl Champion)

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Ohio State's Mike Vrabel welcomes new coaching challenge with Buckeyes' defensive line
Published: Friday, August 17, 2012
By Doug Lesmerises, The Plain Dealer

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Kyle Robertson, Columbus Dispatch
After a year coaching the linebackers, former NFL standout Mike Vrabel has a simple philosophy for his new students, the Ohio State defensive line. "We're going to play the best players," he said Friday. "If I think I've got four really good guys and they don't get tired, they'll play the whole game."
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COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Even while serving as the Buckeyes' linebackers coach a year ago, Mike Vrabel would work with Ohio State's defensive linemen on better using their hands.

"Violent hands," was what Vrabel, now the defensive line coach, said Friday, adding that to playing physical and playing square as the basics of his philosophy. "That's what we're teaching every day," he said. "We've got to know what to do, but that's going to be how we do it."

The deepest and most talented portion of Ohio State's roster is now in the hands of the former Buckeye who made his name in the NFL but is in just his second season as a coach. Vrabel takes over a group that had been under the tutelage of long-time assistant Jim Heacock. Led by John Simon and Johnathan Hankins, maybe the two best players on the roster, the rest of the unit is young and deep, born of two strong recruiting classes and now led by a coach in an entirely new position from a year ago.

Last season, Vrabel joined the staff to work under one of his best friends and his former Buckeye teammate, Luke Fickell. Now Fickell, the defensive coordinator but no longer the head coach, is more peer than boss.

Vrabel filled Fickell's spot coaching the linebackers, but now he's back with the linemen. His new boss, Urban Meyer, has a strong friendship with the man with whom Vrabel's spent much of his time in the NFL, New England coach Bill Belichick.

"I think they want a prepared football team for the games and he's willing to do whatever it takes to get his football team prepared," Vrabel said when asked for shared traits between Meyer and Belichick. "Whether that's replay a down or replay a series if it's not right, it's no different than what Coach Belichick used to say, 'Let's not confuse activity with achievement.'

"Go out there and break a sweat, [that] may not necessarily be getting anything done. And we're going to go out there and work for two hours and it may take us three hours, but we're going to get two hours of good work in."

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http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2012/08/ohio_states_mike_vrabel_welcom.html
 
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