Mike Vrabel Shares Encouraging Update On Patriots’ Christian Barmore

Things appear to be trending in the right direction for Christian Barmore.

The 2024 season was a trying campaign for Barmore, who was diagnosed with blood clots in late July and wasn’t activated off the reserve/non-football injury list until mid-November. The Patriots defensive tackle’s stint on the active roster was short-lived, though, as he was placed back on the NFI list in late December due to recurring symptoms.

The setback cast some uncertainty over Barmore’s status for the 2025 season. But when Mike Vrabel met with the media Monday morning at the NFL annual meeting in West Palm Beach, New England’s head coach shared a promising update on the 25-year-old.

“By all accounts, I think he’s going to participate in the voluntary offseason program,” Vrabel told reporters, per a team-provided video. ” … He came in with an edge. He popped in the other day to see the doctors. When he walked into the training room, all the trainers and just his energy, his presence — I know that he’s feeling better. We’ll continue to evaluate him. It’s something very serious. We take the health of our players extremely serious, especially when you’re talking about something like blood clots. We’re going to have a great plan for him. We’re gonna do right by him.”

Given what Barmore has been through, it’s probably not fair to place any sort of expectations on the 2021 second-round pick. However, it would be tough to blame Patriots fans for dreaming about a ferocious front seven featuring Barmore and newcomer Milton Williams.

Time will tell what New England’s plan for Barmore entails. But it sure sounds like he’s on the mend.