The departure of New England Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien immediately thereafter means that the Pats' offense will be entering a period of transition this offseason. What makes this transition particularly fascinating is that after O'Brien (and Bill Belichick) spent the past three years gradually overhauling a record-setting offense installed by Josh McDaniels, it will be McDaniels himself who takes over as O'Brien's successor. In this way, perhaps "retrofit" is a better word choice here than "transition." The amount of retrofitting, and the extent to which retrofitting is successful, will go a long way toward determining New England's Super Bowl chances next season and beyond.
Let's begin with a history lesson. In 2007, McDaniels' second season as New England's offensive coordinator, the Patriots lined up with three or more wide receivers 72 percent of the time, which was the second-most in the NFL. In 2008, they ranked third at 70 percent. During McDaniels' brief tenure as head coach in Denver, the Broncos ranked seventh in three-or-more-wide frequency both seasons. Finally, this season, with McDaniels serving as offensive coordinator in St. Louis, the Rams used three or more wide receivers 69 percent of the time. To state the obvious, then, McDaniels has an affinity for overloading formations with wide receivers.
Almost immediately upon McDaniels' departure, New England began the process of shifting away from multiple-receiver sets, and toward greater use of multiple-tight end formations. After using two or more tight ends only 26 percent of the time in 2008, the past three seasons have seen a gradual increase over time: 34 percent in 2009, 47 percent in 2010 and 50 percent in 2011. (We mark a player as a tight end if he is lined up as a tight end or in the slot, but not if he is lined up in the backfield or wide outside the numbers. So the use of the tight ends as personnel might be greater than our percentages indicate.)
For most NFL teams, using two or more tight ends is a running formation. Anyone who has watched them over the past two seasons knows this hasn't been the case with the Patriots. Despite using more tight ends under O'Brien, the Patriots' overall run-pass ratio hardly diverged from McDaniels' last two seasons as offensive coordinator: 40 percent in 2007, 45 percent run in 2008, 41 percent in 2009, 44 percent in 2010 and 39 percent in 2011.
This is because what has diverged under O'Brien is the frequency with which New England throws out of two-or-more-tight end formations. In 2008, the Patriots did so only 18 percent of the time. Back then, they were like most teams, for which it's a heavy run formation. However, that frequency increased to 29 percent in 2009, then to 47 percent in 2010 and finally to 57 percent this season.
Based on the above, Football Outsiders' game-charting tendencies paint a clear picture of New England's transition from McDaniels to O'Brien. Perhaps because of losing Donte' Stallworth and Jabar Gaffney, they made a conscious decision in 2009 to start using more tight ends, but not in the typical run-formation sense. Unfortunately, this shift was attenuated by the fact that the tight ends on their roster were Ben Watson, Chris Baker and Michael Matthews, a trio that didn't quite strike fear into the hearts of opposing defenses. To remedy this, they drafted Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez in 2010, fully implemented the two-tight end passing offense and watched their plan come to fruition over the past two seasons, ultimately resulting in a Super Bowl appearance Sunday.
That's the history. What the future holds depends on how things change -- if at all -- under McDaniels.
There are basically only three options. First, although it flies in the face of his career as an offensive coordinator, McDaniels could keep the two-tight-end passing offense as it currently exists. Second, he could attempt a complete overhaul and return the Patriots to a three-wide base offense. Third, he could attempt a retrofit, i.e., keeping the basic two-tight end structure in place, but incorporating some three-wide elements of Patriots offenses past. Let's examine these one at a time.
Seeing as how, on both offense and defense, Belichick tends to base his schemes on the available personnel, it seems unlikely we'll see a complete return to three-wide under McDaniels because of the players he has at his disposal. After all, when wishes like Gronkowski and Hernandez are granted, it's difficult -- and borderline insane -- to try to put the genie back in the bottle. According to Football Outsiders' DYAR measure of total player value, Gronkowski ranked first among tight ends, and Hernandez ranked seventh. That's a lot of value to ignore simply based on philosophical stubbornness.
At the same time, however, outside of Wes Welker, who ranked third in DYAR this season, the New England receiving corps is underwhelming to say the least. Only one other Patriots receiver was targeted enough times to qualify for our rankings, and that receiver, Deion Branch, ranked 39th, and will be hitting the market as an unrestricted free agent. After Branch, the only other Patriots receiver with 10 or more targets was Chad Ochocinco, and we all know how that experiment went this year. At a certain point, teams are going to figure out how to defend the middle of the field against Gronkowski, Hernandez and Welker. Therefore, although it's tempting to be content with their current success, keeping the offense as is also isn't likely to happen.
Rather, what's most likely is the third option: McDaniels keeps the two-tight end base offense, but adds in more spread formations to keep defenses honest. This can manifest itself in a couple of ways. From a formation perspective, perhaps the easiest thing to do -- and I'd bet on it -- would be to line Hernandez up as an outside receiver even more often than he does already. This season, he did so about 12 percent of the time, which was nearly six times as often as Gronkowski. On such plays, the Patriots had a 64 percent offensive success rate, so increasing the frequency to 15 or 20 percent could pay dividends without massively overhauling the underlying system.
From a personnel perspective, this offseason figures to have one of the best wide receiver markets in recent memory, so improving their wide receiving corps is another way to modestly implement more three-wide sets. The receiver New England will likely set its sights on is Lloyd, who has publicly expressed his desire to follow McDaniels wherever he ends up.
No matter the coordinator, New England has ranked in the top eight of DVOA every season since 2004. So whichever way McDaniels' latest tenure in New England goes, the Patriots will almost certainly remain an elite offense as long as Tom Brady is healthy.
Nevertheless, the path that's most likely to put the Patriots back in the Super Bowl over the next few seasons involves keeping the current offensive scheme in place, but tweaking it by using Hernandez more as a wide receiver and signing Lloyd to further improve their outside passing game.
