Deus Irae

On a football field, it's 11 on 11. Now, take out the quarterback, who's got the ball, and it's 11 on 10. That means that every single play gives a situational advantage to the defense if they choose to use it. Now, if you put 4 wide out there and the opponent sends 7 men, your quarterback has about2 seconds to drop back, find an open receiver and get rid of the ball. New England's receivers aren't the type who break open that quickly against man coverage. Running a game plan the way you want against that Dolphins defense would achieve nothing but playing time for Cassel as he comes in for an injured Brady.

You, along with NEM and the rest of the people who clamor for changes of this sort, overlook simple reality: the receivers who've historically been good at this for the Patriots were Branch and Brown. Branch is gone and Brown, while still capable, is no longer able to do it as well as in the past and cannot be relied upon to be open every time as in the past. It's why the quick release portion of Weis' offense worked so well with little waterbug receivers but is nowhere near as effective with guys like Caldwell, Gaffney and Jackson.

Rob0729

You cannot employ this offense on every team. You can on a cover 2 defense. This is the same gameplan we had vs. the Vikes. But this type of offense wouldn't have worked vs. Miami or the Jets. Their defenses a designed better to stop the a spread offense or multiple receiver sets.

The problem is this offense doesn't have the talent to stretch the field and that hurts McDaniels' play calling against certain teams. Both the Jets and Dolphins are capable of taking away the short passing game and dare you to throw deep. That is why we struggled against those defenses. That ain't all McDaniels' fault.

McDaniels doesn't change from game to game. Neither do the players. What does change is the defense. This team is designed to pick apart cover 2 defenses. It isn't designed to pick apart a team that will take away the short passing game and ask you to throw intermediate and deep passes a lot.

That is the cards that McDaniels has dealt. Hence why he looks good against cover 2 teams and confused against other teams. I think people put too much blame on him and not the talent he has to work with.

BelichickFan

I'm fairly sure in the back pages of this forum somewhere, NEM has stated he expects Josh to be replaced as OC next year. This would seem to suggest otherwise :

"McDaniels was as well, and it was hard to miss the embrace he received from coach Bill Belichick after the game."

Seriously, my bigger concern is that with Mangini's success as a young coach a year out from being a Patriots one year coordinator that we may only be a year or two from losing McDaniels to another team as a head coach. Seriously.

JoeSixPat

I know - which is why I said you can't employ that against every team.

But the fact is we don't have a deep game.

So you can't just say "well the Dolphins were challenging us to beat them deep." You're right - they absolutely were. They were daring us to do so and we couldn't. They were insulting us by bringing their safeties to the line of scrimmage and we still couldn't do anything.

Given the lack of time Brady had in that and the Jets game, a short quick pass, keeping the D off balance with a number of different recievers, keeping the LBs and Safeties out of Brady's face using a no huddle more often would have been a better option - but that's not the gameplan that was used.

Maybe they felt the gameplan they used for the Dolphins was better - but it clearly didn't work.

Yesterday's gameplan covered our deficiency in the long game - and it did it well by using the no huddle and about 10 different receivers - and it did eventually open the long game for Thomas.

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PatsFan37

My fondest hope is that Pees and McDaniels are so good that they're considered for coordinator positions every year and that our players are offered top dollar when they get to free agency. That is the necessary consequence of winning. Only by losing will the players and coaches be ignored.

mgteich

Yup, although in 2003 there were more screens.

AzPatsFan

Bingo! you've got bingo!

The spread them out offense ONLY works occasionally. It could never be a mainline Offense like employed against Jax. The number one reason is that we don't have three or four Bradys on th roster and you'd need that many to get through the season.

Despite NEM's equal opportunity hatred for all play callers, today that means Offensive Coordinators everywhere; on the Pats, they are creatures of Head Coach Bill Belichick in his regime. They run the Offense that he wants them to run. Period.

To a degree they are puppets with their strings fundamentally pulled by Belichick. NEM is as misguided as the fellow who criticizes and argues with the wooden dummy, Charlie McCarthy without offering a comment at all to puppeteer/ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.

They know full well that they Will be lucky to have 40% of the teams cap allocated to their side of the ball. They MUST win substituting smarts and complexity, and execution for expensive athletic talent.

That restricts what it is possible to do, even if NEM and cohorts, don't think so. Belichick removed a considerable amount of pressure on Josh last year by making him the de facto OC but not he official de jure OC. Realizing he had a keeper, and a future coaching genius, he made it official this year and the NEMs of the world predictably circled like vultures.

McDaniels had a tough hand handed to him. The entire WR corps was renewed and in Branch's case it was unanticipated for 2006, but preparations had been made to accommodate a 2007 departure should that come to pass. He has persevered and prospered in spite of the obstacles.

Mangini may be gone but Belichick has added another star to the firmament of coaches who will become HCs in either major college or pro football. Its not too soon to predict success for the Josh McDaniels experiment. Saban, Mangini, RAC, Pat Hill, Kirk Ferentz and CharlieWeis will have another compatriot or two added to the coaching tree sooner or later, in McDaniels. Another is overlooked superlative job Rob Ryan is doing, amidst the disaster at Oakland.

Belichick is a very good judge of men; even if NEM would never agreee.

PatsWickedPissah

Folks who regret that the Pats didn't use the xtra wideout alignment against many earlier opponents forget the lesson of this game and the Minnesoter game. Both times the Pats faced what was correctly billed as an awesome run D. Every team has strengths and weaknesses. BB, Josh McD and Tom Brady made the wise gameplan decision to let the Jags run D emphasis work against the Jags. Featured multiple wides to frustrate the D and neutralize it's strength. This approach set up the Pats' runs beautifully.

It's a mystery to me why some fans are so self-obsessed with their own (flawed) visions of offense that they would miss the simple brilliance of refusing to play into the other team's game plan. Matchups ARE relevant. If you have the players to take advantage of a counter-strength strategy, do so.

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RayClay

It is ridiculous to compare McDaniels to Mangini at this point.

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BelichickFan

Mangini certainly had more experience a year ago than McDaniels does now.

But . . .

McDaniels' offense has been as successful as Mangini's defense was last year. That's without a guru to lean on like Mangini had with Belichick by his side.

McDaniels has been a coordinator two years now, compared to Mangini's one. Yes, McDaniels has only one year as coordinator in name but two in reality.

McDaniels has had as much to deal with as Mangini did. The latter had the injuries to Bruschi and Harrison last year but McDaniels had the unexpected loss of Branch. Plus Mangini didn't have to deal with NEM's constant threats

McDaniels won't be a HC this offseason at 30 years old. But I bet he's one younger than Mangini was when he became a HC at age 35.