FOXBOROUGH - Corey Kiner has only been with the Patriots since the end of the preseason, but he already sounds like a player who knows exactly what kind of place he has landed in.
The second-year running back said the vibe inside New England’s building has stood out immediately, and Sunday gave him a chance to feel it in a bigger way. With the Patriots trying to close out the Jets, Kiner handled the largest workload of his young career and helped carry the offense through the final stretch of a 53-man roster reality that arrived quickly after his trade.
“This team atmosphere is something special. This isn’t everywhere.
It’s special,” Kiner said. “No matter where you are on the depth chart, guys come to work every day and that’s what I respect.
Then, last week, coach Vrabel gets into practice and does drills with us. That just makes me go harder seeing him, man.
It just means a lot.”
Kiner finished with 11 carries for 57 yards, and most of that production came in the fourth quarter. He never broke off a run longer than 12 yards, but he kept the chains moving when New England needed steady gains rather than fireworks.
That mattered because the Patriots were juggling the backfield all afternoon. Rhamondre Stevenson was held to 2.6 yards per carry, and TreVeyon Henderson coughed up a fumble after returning earlier than expected from a high ankle sprain while New England was nursing a one-score lead in the third quarter.
Vrabel leaned into the matchup and the momentum Kiner was creating.
“He runs hard. He runs hard, and it’s the same way he’s selling the kickoff returns,” Vrabel said. “We got three capable backs and you ride the hot hand.”
That hot hand showed up on the Patriots’ last scoring march, when Kiner was handed the ball eight straight times. The drive began with 5:49 left and carried all the way through the two-minute warning, exactly the kind of grind-it-out sequence a running back dreams about when he’s fighting for trust and touches.
Andy Borregales then drilled a 26-yard kick to make it a seven-point game again, and Drake Maye finished the job by kneeling out the clock on the final possession.
For Kiner, that sequence carried real weight. It wasn’t just about stats or snaps. It was about being the guy his teammates and coaches trusted when the game was there to be closed.
“It felt good,” Kiner said. “Like I’ve said, the guys in the room, they helped me prepare, guys on the team been helping me prepare, just everybody has been putting me in position to succeed and put my best foot forward.
“The last few minutes of the game meant a lot, seeing the smiles on my teammates’ faces and coaches’ faces, knowing that they trusted me and it worked out.”
Sunday also carried a quieter layer of familiarity for Kiner. Former Patriots back Kevin Faulk once recruited him to LSU, and the connection goes back to Kiner’s high school days.
“It was a great time with Coach Faulk,” Kiner said. “I tell the story all the time, he came to my high school and recruited me. I didn’t know much about him and my high school coaches were telling me ‘man, you need to know who you are talking to’ so I google searched him and stuff like that to figure out who he was.”
Kiner spent one season at LSU before transferring back to Cincinnati, the school close to where he grew up in Ohio. He said he wanted to build that relationship with Faulk after seeing what he accomplished both in college and in the NFL.
“When I graduated I was ready to build that relationship. I saw the production he had in college at LSU and then in the NFL, so just wanted to follow in his footsteps and I went there my freshman year and it was a great time.
I’ve got mad love for LSU, it felt great being on that team. There was a lot of stars on that team as well.”
Now he’s in Foxborough, trying to make the most of the chance he’s been chasing for a long time. And after his first real opportunity to carry the load for New England, Kiner made it clear he noticed what it meant.
“I’ve been working for that moment right there,” Kiner said. “The team being able to rely on me and me putting my best foot forward just meant a lot.”
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