Before Van Pelt, Offensive Coordinator Candidates ‘Unimpressed’ Following Interviews
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Looking back at the process last January when it came to how the New England Patriots put together their staff, there were certainly questions about the process when it came to hiring an offensive coordinator.
The club cycled through multiple candidates before finally settling on Alex Van Pelt, someone Eliot Wolf – who, according to most reports, helped lead the process – had familiarity with, given their time together in Cleveland.
Andrew Callahan and Doug Kyed of the Boston Herald wrote a terrific piece on Thursday outlining what went wrong over the course of the 2024 season. According to the report, as the club interviewed candidates to fill their void on the offensive side of the ball, there may have been a reason why so many declined the opportunity.
“Other candidates left their meetings unimpressed by the Patriots’ questions and process, per sources,” they wrote, referring to the offensive coordinator job.
For a team that really hadn’t been down this road for more than two decades, it made sense. There was clearly a lot of inexperience from ownership, who obviously had Bill Belichick at the helm for more than two decades. It was also somewhat new for Wolf, who headed up the personnel side of things in his past roles but by all accounts, prior to that, hadn’t really been involved in the interview process as it pertained to coaches.
The one positive was that Wolf’s connections and his network helped the club fill out New England’s staff, but it explains Van Pelt’s sudden hire given their history.
Meanwhile, internally, it sounds like there was definitely a lot of venting when it came to the roster, which was clearly not good. The Patriots found themselves in a really bad place last spring when they dealt with being a team in disarray, which absolutely hampered their ability to bring in quality players through free agency. The overall sentiment certainly appeared to be, “Thanks, but no thanks,” with the club instead seemingly used as leverage for players who preferred a different landing spot.
That left them with bottom of the barrel players like Chukwuma Okorafor and Nick Leverett, with the club then also forced to lean on existing guys like Vederian Lowe, along with scraping the waiver wire and practice squads all season for answers. The results essentially played out exactly how many feared it would, and it remained an issue throughout 2024.
Wolf told Henry McKenna in a terrific piece for Fox Sports that he’s more confident they’ll be able to have a better shot this time around, especially after what turned out to be a solid season for rookie quarterback, Drake Maye.
“Yeah, absolutely,” said Wolf. “Player X from another team is like, ‘Yeah, rookie quarterback, great. You know, we’ve all seen rookie quarterbacks come in and struggle, so that doesn’t really mean a lot now.’
“Drake’s actually playing well. It’s on film for everyone to see.”
Now the only question will be who they’ll hire as head coach, which will also hopefully bring some added credibility to an organization that definitely didn’t seem to have it last March.
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It seams easy to say at this point anyone including myself as a casual observer from afar at the time could have pointed out these problems as they were unfolding. Why would I trust another round as a fan or player or even coach unless some significant changes are made to the executive team or even ownership.