Following the departure of Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft emphasized the need to make sure they had the right people supporting new head coach Jerod Mayo moving forward, and that trend continued on Tuesday.
After rounding out the staff of coordinators with the addition of Alex Van Pelt on the offensive side of the ball last week, the club is reportedly bringing in another experienced name to the mix.
According to reports, former Giants head coach Ben McDadoo is being hired to work with the offensive staff here in New England.
Like Van Pelt, McAdoo has experience developing quarterbacks, which will likely be a priority given the Patriots’ situation at the position heading into April’s draft.
As it currently stands, the Patriots have the number three overall selection, which many believe will see them utilize to potentially select a future signal-caller, whether it’s someone like Drake Maye or Jayden Daniels on night one.
If it’s neither of those two and the club either trades back and accumulates picks to bolster an offensive roster that’s devoid of talent, the other expectation is that the club will still target a signal caller at some point, likely at least on Day two.
However, regardless of how it plays out, the development of whoever they select is going to be paramount to their success moving forward.
(PHOTO: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)
While McAdoo’s signing isn’t necessarily a splashy one, he does provide a fair amount of value given his experience. He also becomes another asset that Van Pelt – who previously worked with McAdoo in Green Bay – can lean on as he establishes himself on Mayo’s staff.
One thing that may be a concern as Mayo looks to establish his own culture here is laying down the rules when it comes to how players are handled, especially as it relates to how tight the ship is run and what types of discipline are given.
That was an area that plagued McAdoo during his days in New York with the Giants, with one player telling NFL reporter Josina Anderson in 2017 that the then-head coach was going too far and had lost the team.
“McAdoo has lost this team,” one anonymous player told Anderson. “He’s got us going 80 percent on Saturdays before we get on a plane to play a game. It’s wild. Changed our off day. He’s dishing out fines like crazy. Suspended two of our stars when we need them the most. Throws us under the bus all the time. He’s ran us into the ground and people wonder why we’ve been getting got.”
Those comments came ahead of a 51-17 blowout loss at home, which dropped his team to 1-7. He also benched Eli Manning later that season, ending his consecutive game streak for one week in favor of Geno Smith, which led to similar results, with Manning returning under center the next week.
However, McAdoo told Peter King a year later he had no regret over the decision. At 2-9, the club was in a tough spot and he was trying to evaluate the players behind him ahead of what he called a “big quarterback draft.”
“Right or wrong, I am at peace with how I handled the decision to play quarterbacks other than Eli Manning down the stretch of last season,” said McAdoo. “I was not ending Eli’s career with the Giants. I was making sure we knew what we had behind him with a high draft choice prior to a big quarterback draft.”
While McAdoo likely learned from those days, we’ve heard the reports about the frustration some players had when it came to how things were run under the previous staff here in New England. Mayo talked about the fact he planned to “rebuild some relationships, knock down silos, and collaborate.”
Hopefully, he’ll also make sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to all of that.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
