FOXBORO — New Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel is going to use the six banners hanging above the south end zone of Gillette Stadium — three of which he helped earn as a linebacker — as a blueprint for what he expects out of his players.

As Vrabel said Monday in his introductory press conference to become the Patriots’ 16th head coach, those past championships will not give his team an advantage on the field, but they are a reminder of how hard they need to work and what they need to do to be successful.

Vrabel’s former players on the Titans joke that Vrabel will regularly remind his players of his 14 seasons in the NFL. Those banners from Super Bowl XXXVI, XXXVIII and XXXIX are evidence that Vrabel was a pretty damn good football player who played on teams that knew how to win.

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“I think it’s a great reminder of what it takes to win and the type of people that you have to have in the organization, the selflessness, the work and the sacrifice that you have to make,” Vrabel said.

The Patriots have now gone six seasons without a playoff win. They’ve only made the postseason twice in that span and lost both games — once to Vrabel’s Titans in Tom Brady’s last game with the Patriots.

Robert Kraft has tasted success that most owners can only dream of, and it’s clearly his goal to reach that plateau once again. And Kraft believes that Vrabel is the right man to bring the Patriots back to contention.

“In the interview process, Mike showed us that he had a very deep understanding of our current team, and most importantly, he had a clear and focused strategy of how to get us back to the championship way that is not only so important to all of us, but also something that I think our fan base really deserves and expects,” Kraft said Monday.

Vrabel is realistic in his goals. The Patriots have finished the last two seasons 4-13. They might have the worst roster in the NFL, and even with the No. 4 overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft and $130 million in salary cap space, it will likely take more than one offseason to make them a playoff contender.

So, for now, he wants the team to be able to take advantage of other teams’ mistakes, and that’s something they struggled to do at times under Jerod Mayo in 2024.

“We just want to be good enough to take advantage of bad football. That’s where we’re going to start,” Vrabel said. “That’s what I’ve tried to tell all the players is right now I don’t know if we’re good enough to take advantage of bad football. I’m unsure. Like we’re undefeated right now, but if we can just work towards taking advantage of bad football … and not being the ones that make the mistakes, and focusing on the little things and the details and helping them do their job better, that’s a great place to start.”

Eventually, however, Vrabel aspires to coach a team that’s good enough to “win the AFC East, to host home playoff games, and to compete for championships.”

“And what the timeline is, just like we say with injuries, like we’re not going to put a timeline on an injury, and we’re certainly not going to put a timeline on what those will be,” Vrabel continued. “But that’s going to be the expectations, and we’re going to work like crazy, we’re going to compete like crazy, we’re going to give the players a plan, and they’re going to form an identity on the field in the way that we’re going to play and play for each other that they’re going to be proud of.”

Identity is another thing the Patriots lacked in 2024. They wanted to be able to run the football, stop the run and cover kicks, but it never quite came together the way Mayo envisioned it. And he never communicated his goals well enough to members of his staff.

Vrabel wants his team’s culture to be unselfish and defined by the leaders on the team. He preached that he plants to “remove entitlement” from the team and “demand effort and finish.”

“One thing I realized about culture is you can find out what your culture looks like when your family, your business, or your team is at its low point,” Vrabel said. “It’s not when you’re winning Super Bowls. It’s not when you’re 7-1 or 10-1, then everybody’s waving towels and everybody’s happy and they’re excited to come to work. But when you get hit in the mouth or you’re down or the chips are against you, then you can take a snapshot of what your company or your team looks like, and then you’ll find out what kind of culture you have.

“But that culture is going to be built on winning, a competitive spirit throughout our roster and throughout our players and throughout our coaches and our staff and the ability to put the team first and care about somebody other than yourself.”

The Patriots are currently at their low point. They haven’t had four straight losing seasons in over 30 years.

Vrabel has yet to assemble a staff, and his roster currently has more question marks than answers. But Vrabel has the experience to set a clear vision for his team and a plan to return the team to prominence.

That vision will be complete when he’s able to add a seventh banner to the south end zone of Gillette Stadium. It starts with the Patriots being better than the bad teams.