Tuesday Patriots Notebook 5/28: News and Notes
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Some Patriots news and notes on this Tuesday:
Former Patriots quarterback Brian Hoyer appeared on Tom Curran’s Patriots Talk Podcast last week, talking about the recent New England Patriots OTAs.
Hoyer was asked how the new offense the Patriots are set to run might differ from the one that both Josh McDaniels and Bill O’Brien ran previously. Hoyer explained that the West Coast style of offense takes away a lot of the mental load that quarterbacks have to deal with, which he believes should be a little easier for whoever is under center.
“From my experiences, and I don’t know what version of that offense it is, but it’s a lot easier on the quarterback,” said Hoyer. “There’s not the mic points, there’s not a bunch of checks at the line, there’s not a lot of audibles, at least from my experience in that West Coast system, as compared to the Josh McDaniels, the Bill O’Brien offense that I was in as a young guy. It put a lot on the quarterback. You had to come up on every play and identify the defensive front, find the linebacker, where’s the safety rotation?”
“This system is built upon the run game, the explosive play-action passes off of that that keeps some quick drop-back passes, so it does take a lot of the mental load off of the quarterback. I’m not saying it’s easy. Playing quarterback in the NFL in any system is not easy. But you don’t have to think about it as much presnap as what you would have in the offense we ran with Josh.”
Among the players on the roster, Jacoby Brissett is the lone player with experience in this system, which certainly gives the veteran the edge in terms of at least having an understanding of the offense.
However, Hoyer said that while Brissett is definitely a resource for the younger players on the roster, both Drake Maye and Bailey Zappe have to have the awareness of watching how he operates and trying to learn from that.
“People assume that Jacobi should be in there just telling these guys like, ‘Hey, do this, do that.,'” said Hoyer. “No, those guys have to come in and have the awareness to say, ‘I’m just going to watch a veteran guy who’s played a long time in the league, started a lot of games. I’m going to watch him every day and see how he interacts, see how he leads a meeting, see how he’s talking to the receiver out on the field.'”
Hoyer explained that watching a veteran is incredibly valuable, even if it means just watching how they handle themselves both in and out of the huddle. He also noted that the type of person Brissett is should create a good environment for the young guys learning behind him.
“There’s so many little things that you can learn from a guy like Jacoby, who has been a starter on multiple teams,” said Hoyer. “Every team that he’s ever left, he’s always been looked at as one of the best teammates. The Browns had a welcome back sign for him last year when he went to go back and play them. And that just speaks to the type of guy that he is. And so I think there’s so much they can learn and ask questions along the way.”
Still, Hoyer believes that it’s not Brissett’s job to teach those guys about every little detail and that there’s a balance when it comes to leaning on him versus asking the coaching staff.
“I remember seeing Tom [Brady] do something and I’m being like, ‘Man, I’m not understanding how he’s seeing that or how he’s recognizing that.’ And that’s when you interject and ask questions,” said Hoyer. “It’s not Jacoby’s job. That’s why you have Alex Van Pelt and [T.C. McCartney], the quarterback coach. Those guys are there to instruct these guys on, ‘Here’s the play, here’s the read, here’s what we’re doing.’ Jacoby’s job is to lead by example, because ultimately, day one, game one, it’s probably going to be him out there. So he has a job of having to prepare to play.”
With Maye essentially in a similar position to where Mac Jones was as a rookie, Hoyer said that in Jones’ first season, he leaned on him heavily as he tried to get a handle on the offense.
Hoyer explained that Jones’ efforts were respected because he didn’t repeat any of the questions, or ask about anything he already knew the answer to.
The latter was an irritant for Brady, who Hoyer recounted a story about how the former quarterback handled a previous player behind him.
“I remember, obviously, I wasn’t preparing to be the starter of Mac’s rookie year, but he leaned on me heavily, having been in the offense, and he was texting me,” said Hoyer. “Sometimes I’d be in bed, I’d wake up the next morning, I’d see a message from 11:30 at night, and I would respond to him. But I think as long as you’re using that as… You’re not asking questions you know the answers to already and confirming that.”
“I have a story about, and I won’t mention the guy’s name, but when I was here in my younger years, and we had another quarterback in the room, and he’d come in every day, and he’d be asking questions to Tom. And they were questions that were pretty simple, kind of already knew the answer to. And at a certain point, Tom goes, ‘You got three questions a day. Use them wisely.'”
“So the next day, he comes in, he goes, ‘What’s up, Tom?’ He goes, ‘That’s number one.’ And so I think there are certain things, if you’re actually asking questions to learn, ask away, ask all the time. But if you’re asking a question that you already know the answer to, but you’re trying to just confirm, that’s college, high school stuff.”
One other topic that came up centered on the fact that Zappe received the second-team reps during the lone practice that was open to the media, and he gave his thoughts on why the club gave him the reps ahead of Maye.
Hoyer believes part of the reason may simply be the fact they could be pondering having Zappe be the back up for the early part of the season until Maye is closer to being ready to play.
“First of all, I think they have to make a decision here pretty soon, ‘What are they going to do with Bailey Zappe?'” said Hoyer. “Clearly, they drafted two quarterbacks this year. Obviously, Bailey’s played a decent amount of football in the NFL and I think at some point, there’s only so many reps and there’s four guys to try to figure that out.”
“So you have to determine if maybe that’s what they’re doing. Maybe they’re giving him a lot of reps to see, ‘Do we still want to keep him around?’ If Drake’s not going to play, maybe he’s the third quarterback, and Bailey’s the backup, I don’t know.”
However, Hoyer believes that this is a decision that should be made sooner rather than later, since should the club ultimately decide to move on from Zappe, it would make sense to try and do it earlier to give him the best opportunity to establish himself somewhere else.
“The longer it goes, the worse it gets for Bailey if you’re going to end up going to a different team because now you’ve got to go in late, you’ve got to earn a job,” said Hoyer. “I’ve been in that position before. It’s like if you’re going to get traded or released, you’d rather do it sooner than later because it gives you a better opportunity on your next team.”
One interesting nugget from Ben Volin of the Boston Globe. Volin wrote in his Sunday column that Brissett’s one of the better players when it comes to ball security, which should be good news for fans who watched both Jones and Zappe combine for 21 picks last season. Volin points out that Brissett has thrown an interception on just 1.4 percent of his career pass attempts, which is tied with Aaron Rodgers for the lowest interception percentage of any quarterback since 1990. He’s thrown just 23 interceptions in 1,600 pass attempts, while Rodgers has 105 interceptions in 7,661 attempts. … One other bit of information was the fact that the NFL Draft is apparently not a money-maker for the league. Volin writes that the NFL loses money both on that event and on international games, with the marketing and brand awareness being the things “that more than make up for it.” … Given Rodgers likely being around for the 2024 season, he’ll likely make the Jets a team that will disrupt the balance of power held by Buffalo and Miami in the AFC East the last two years. That means that the chances of three teams within the Division finishing with double-digit wins are unlikely, meaning one among those three will probably face some misery in 2024. My thoughts about the Dolphins taking a step back could be a real thing, given a couple of other things Volin mentioned. The first is that there’s some uncertainty beyond this season for Tua Tagovailoa, who had his fifth-year option picked up, but has no security beyond this season. The deal Jared Goff just signed ($212 million) set a benchmark that is likely far more than what Tagovailoa has proven he’s worth, which could also complicate things. Couple that with the fact that Miami is 6-10 after Thanksgiving the last two years and 1-4 in January, and there’s reason to believe seeing the Dolphins drop off this year could be something to keep an eye on. … We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the loss of Celtics legend Bill Walton, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 71 after a battle with cancer. Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe had a nice column on Walton, with a terrific quote from the former Celtic from when Shaughnessy previously asked him about that incredible 1985-86 season. “When you’re part of something that special, it changes you,” Walton told him. “You spend the rest of your life trying to get that back. When you’re doing it, it seems like it’s going to last forever. When it ends, you realize how fragile, how tenuous, and how fleeting it all is.” Our thoughts go out to his friends and family.
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