Patriots Hire Coaching Analytics Innovator to Assist Mike Vrabel

As the New England Patriots continue their on-field preparations for the 2025 NFL Season, they are also adding some expertise to assist their coaching staff. 

The Patriots, per a report from ESPN’s Seth Walder, are hiring former San Francisco 49ers research and development coordinator Ekene Olekanma as their new director of coaching analytics — a newly-created position under head coach Mike Vrabel. 

Having spent the past three seasons with the Niners, Olekanma initially served as a football research and development analyst before being promoted to “football R&D coordinator.” His duties, per 49ers.com, primarily involved “working on different analytical projects for the 49ers coaching staff — including “self-scouting, opponent research, metric creation, and player evaluation.”

Olekanma began his football journey at the University of Toledo. He appeared in 47 games for the Rockets as a linebacker, while also studying engineering and biomedical engineering. Olekanma earned a Bachelor of Engineering in bioengineering, followed by a Master of Science with distinction from DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media in 2021. Shortly thereafter, he accepted a coaching research and development analyst position with the Baltimore Ravens — a role which he held for one season before joining the Niners. 

With the Patriots, Olekanma is expected to work closely with Vrabel and his staff. As such, he will become part of a rapidly growing analytics department, which includes vice president of football operations and strategy John Streicher, director of football strategy Marshall Oium, and director of research Richard Miller.

Vrabel has long been a proponent of incorporating analytics into his coaching style and strategy. During his introductory press conference in January, the 49-year-old outlined his vision for the role such analytics would play in New England’s coaches room, as well as the front office. 

“We want to use as much information as we can to make great, informed decisions in real time, with real people,” Vrabel explained. “The numbers, and the data, play speed, estimated play speed, all these different things that you can use to evaluate players. That’s one area where we’re going to try to use it.”

“Next, we will look at how we manage our players … how we track player load management … how we construct practice,” he added. 

“The final piece of analytics is game management and risk ratio of going for it, and all those different scenarios that you look at throughout the game.” Vrabel concluded. 

Olekanma’s hiring comes less than 24 hours after the Pats promoted national scout Tony Kinkela to the director of college scouting role.