Mike Vrabel said last week that Josh McDaniels was on his list of people to talk to as the club explored its options to build its coaching staff.
It sounds like on Tuesday, the two finally sat down together.
According to Fox Sports’ Jordan Schultz, the new Patriots head coach interviewed the club’s former offensive coordinator, with Ian Rapoport also reporting over the weekend that McDaniels was “considered to be the favorite” as they conitinued mulling their options.
Prior to today’s news, multiple reports had indicated that McDaniels might not necessarily have been a lock. Despite still living in the area, both Mike Giardi and Greg Bedard of the Boston Sports Journal each recently reported that McDaniels had potential interest elsewhere, but obviously has strong ties to the team where he spent the majority of his coaching tenure.
Still, Giardi said at the end of last week that McDaniels ability to develop young quarterbacks was definitely a factor that had him as someone the team really valued, especially as the Patriots hope to see Drake Maye’s growth continue heading into his sophomore season.
“I think he’s definitely in the mix,” said Giardi of McDaniels. “But I think there are other places Mike might want to look first, and we’ll see. And the one interesting part about it is, and I’m curious to see about how this plays out is have you coached a quarterback, or have you not coached the quarterback? And does that matter to Mike? And when you have your clear centerpiece of your franchise on offense is the rookie quarterback heading into his second year, we saw the job that Alex [Van Pelt] did with him maybe not from a playcaller standpoint, from helping with him develop, you want to continue that trend. And I think the offensive coordinator has to be heavily involved.”
“And that’s where, when you bring up Josh’s name, that’s when you say, ‘Look, Josh does have a good track record of this. He got Jimmy Garoppolo ready to play, he got Jacoby Brissett ready to play, he got Matt Cassel ready to play, he devised an offense for a quarterback who couldn’t throw in Cam Newton. While they were still terrible that year, they had moments where he cobbled something together for a guy who couldn’t throw the ball more than eight yards down the field. So he does have that going for him.”
Whether or not McDaniels might re-join the club is now the big question. Following a move where he walked away from the Indianapolis Colts after accepting their head coaching job back in 2018, his return to the Patriots definitely raised some eyebrows at the time. Back then, it felt like McDaniels might have potentially been the coach in waiting behind then head coach, Bill Belichick.
However, as Belichick’s career continued, the belief was that he would possibly stay with the Patriots long enough to break the all-time wins record.
Instead, McDaniels ended up with an opportunity that was tough to turn down. He ended up taking over the head coach opening in Las Vegas following the 2021 season, where he also brought a good portion of the staff here in New England with him.
Unfortunately, things went poorly again, with McDaniels and general manager Danid Zeigler both being let go midway into the 2023.
Meanwhile, here in New England, the head coach in-waiting ultimately became Jerod Mayo, who lasted just one season and was fired not long after the club’s finale against Buffalo a little over two weeks ago.
Oddly enough, McDaniels misfortunate in 2023 certainly might work in New England’s favor. It would mean that where ever he does ultimately land, the likelihood is that he’ll at least be there for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, Barstool Sports’ Kirk Minihane is reporting that not only has McDaniels interviewed, but his hiring is “imininent.” We’ll have to see if the Patriots are indeed ready to bring McDaniels back for one more round, or if they’ll perhaps go in another direction.
Update: The NFL Network is reporting that McDaniels is indeed expected to be hired by the team.
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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.
