As has been their wont all season, the Patriots defense again got off to a slow start that then snowballed into a dominating performance against the Browns at Gillette Stadium on Sunday, as the team throttled Cleveland by a 32-13 mark. The Browns scored a touchdown on their opening drive, going 70 yards in six plays, then proceeded to tally just 143 yards thereafter.
One notable feature for the Patriots on that opening drive, though, was the absence of defensive lineman Christian Barmore, who sat out the first quarter amid some mystery. He was back on the field in the second quarter.
Asked about Barmore’s situation after the game, head coach Mike Vrabel indicated that it was a disciplinary decision, though he did not get specific.
“I had to make a decision,” Vrabel said. “My job is to protect the team and when there’s actions that I don’t feel like are commiserate with what we want to do here, I gotta make a decision. And we move on.”
Christian Barmore Back in Form
Barmore has been having a solid season here in 2025, and is one of the veteran presences on the team—he’s a former second-round pick out of Alabama who has been with the team since 2021.
His return to form has been part of the resurgence of the team’s defensive front, after an injury-ravaged 2024 season that very nearly did not get off the ground at all. Barmore was diagnosed with blood clots last summer at the opening of training camp and missed the first 10 weeks of the season.
He was not quite himself when he did play in 2024, the first of a four-year, $92 million contract with the Patriots. Barmore has been back in form this season, though.
“I’m feeling really like this is the best shape I’ve ever been in,” Barmore told the team website this month. “I am feeling like myself and confidence is up the sky roof. I’m feeling really good. I love the team, I love the coaches, I love my treatment staff. Everything is going good.”
Patriots Defense Excels Again
By the end of the game, certainly, all hatchets were buried—a photo of Vrabel and Barmore embracing on the way to the locker room made the rounds on social media—and given the way the defense played early on, it’s little wonder.
Vrabel said he was pleased with the results as the game went on.
“I think we settle in,” he said. “I think we get some stops. I don’t think we’ve given up a ton of X plays in that regard after the first drive, whether there was a missed tackle or they got us overaggressive and slipped the guy out of the backfield. But I think they play and they compete for 60 minutes. This isn’t a one or two possession game. It’s 10 or 12 possessions at least in a football game.
“We’ve got to continue to work on the things and enhance the things that we’ve done well and improve on the things that haven’t been so well, which is the early game, the opening script, getting off the field on third down, which we had them in third and long and weren’t able to. But creating third and long opportunities and then continue to get stops.”
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