Experience is the Theme With New Patriots Coaches
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Coming off of what we saw in 2024, there’s one thing that we’ve certainly learned over these last few weeks.
The Patriots went from a team with a lot of inexperience on its coaching staff last season, to instead putting together a group of coaches who will no longer be learning on the job as we head into the 2025 campaign.
With the departure of Jerod Mayo following the team’s finale a few weeks ago, the Patriots moved on from a first-year head coach, an offensive coordinator in his first full season calling plays, and a first-year defensive coordinator.
Since then, they’ve each been replaced with an experienced head coach, an accomplished offensive coordinator, and a defensive coach with years of experience, including time as an assistant head coach.
The moral of the story is New England focused on stability and competentcy, which they’ll need as they try and re-establish a foundation coming off of two-straight 4-13 seasons.
With the hiring of offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels on Tuesday, the Patriots made a move that should certainly pay dividends heading into 2025.
The goal is to get back into contention, a place the Patriots haven’t been since a quick postseason exit in 2021. One of the things that Mike Vrabel said after he was hired was that playing in the postseason is certainly the hope, but he said the more important aspect is improvement, which was something we didn’t really see much of this season as a whole when it came to this football team.
“Well, that’s certainly that our hope,” said Vrabel during an interview with Tom Curran of NBC Sports Boston. “We want to play meaningful games towards the end of the season. I think the one thing that I’ve taken from not only the teams that we had in Tennessee, but successful teams, as you look, is they’ve gotten better as the season has gone on. We saw that maybe in the Baltimore and the Pittsburgh game, that one team has continued to improve, and the other one was still kind of trying to find itself late in the season.”
“That’s something that we believe in, that we’re going to believe strongly in, and understand that it is a long season, and how do we make sure that the players are engaged and continuing to improve as the season goes on?”
The hiring of Josh McDaniels was one that felt like a foregone conclusion as soon as Vrabel’s name was mentioned as a potential head coach candidate. Given his history with the team, it made sense. But despite some simply penciling him into the position, there were reasons to believe it also might have not necessarily been a lock.
Multiple reports had indicated McDaniels had received some interest elsewhere, with the Patriots also doing some additional due diligence of their own while exploring other options.
New England interviewed multiple candidates for the position, including Bears interim coach Thomas Brown and up-and-coming Vikings coordinator Grant Udinski, who is reportedly also in the running for the job in Seattle.
But in the end, the club made the decision to bring back someone they know quite well, with a proven track record of getting the most out of young quarterbacks.
The first is that it brings in someone who has seen so much over the course of his career, with McDnaiels also having been a coach who has made some of the biggest playcalls in key moments.
More importantly, he’s had success getting the most out of a given player, which might see players like Demario Douglas and Rhamondre Stevenson, as well as perhaps Ja’Lynn Polk and Javon Baker, each be more productive in 2025.
First-year offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt was in his first season calling plays in that role in 2024 under Mayo here in Foxboro. But it was a tough run for Van Pelt, albeit he deserves a lot of credit both for Maye’s development, and his growth last season.
One thing that definitely stood out was that the long-time coach spent most of last season evolving with his play-calling as the club – at least initially – seemed to have a plan of how they wanted to bring Maye along.
However, there were reports of dysfunction behind the scenes and it certainly felt like Mayo and Van Pelt were not on the same page for whatever plan the two may have had when it came to the speed in which things were implemented.
With both guys now having been replaced, the hope is that there will be some continuity moving forward as Maye heads into his second season. McDaniels should provide that, and he’s an incredibly smart coach who should make a nice pairing alongside someone who is expected to be the cornerstone of their franchise moving forward.
We’ve already seen McDaniels’ ability to bring out the best in young players. Everyone remembers Mac Jones’ rookie season, which saw Jones lead an offense that put up 462 points on the season that year under McDaniels, good for 6th in the league. New England also finished 3rd in the NFL with a +159 point differential behind both Buffalo (+194) and Dallas (+172).
They were surprisingly efficient under Jones during that 2021 Patriots season, eclipsing the 40 point mark three times while eclipsing 50+ twice.
Some have talked about McDaniels having an old, outdated offense, but he’s a guy who has constantly evolved, and it’s not like he’s a 60+ year old coach. He’s only 48 years old, and he’s someone who loves the game and has constantly morphed with every quarterback he’s ever worked with.
His pairing with Maye is absolutely intriguing, with McDaniels having a player who may be the most physically gifted player he’s ever worked with. Maye’s a smart player and still has a long way to go, but having someone like McDaniels in his ear to teach him the nuances of the game, along with all the little things he learned working with Tom Brady, should definitely play a key role in helping the second-year QB reach his potential.
McDaniels talked about that before last season with former Patriots receiver Julian Edelman on his Games with Names podcast, saying that when it comes to bringing along a young quarterback, there’s no shortcut.
“I think you have to have a plan. And that obviously starts from the head coach’s perspective,” said McDaniels. “And you have to be able to agree on how you’re going to unveil that thing to the player and ultimately bring him along. You know you were a young player that needed to make progress every step of the way. And this is no different. It’s just there’s so much notoriety and so much attention on the quarterback position.”
“So if they’re not talking about your arm angle, they’re talking about your footwork. If they’re not talking about that, they’re talking about your eyes or your read or how you navigated the pocket. And there’s a lot of things that go into playing it well. But at the end of the day, I think you got to take the player where he’s at when he comes in, whether that was [Matt Cassel] or [Jimmy] Garoppolo or [Jared] Stidham or [Jacoby] Brissett, or Mac [Jones], Aiden O’Connell, you got to take the player where he’s at. They’re all at different spots. They all have been taught different things. They’ve all digested different amounts of information. Some have played in different systems than yours. Some have played in maybe some that were a little bit more like yours.”
“And you just got to figure out, ‘All right, what do they know? And what am I going to try to push forward to get him to progress the quickest?’ ‘I think I can get this and this done in OTAs.’ Okay, great. ‘Cadence, play calls, footwork.’ All right, good. Then in training camp, now I got to get him to see different coverages and understand defenses a little bit more. And protections. And then move forward, ball security. And then the red zone is a different animal, and third down, and two-minute offense. So there’s a lot of things that go into it.”
Vrabel also made what appears to be an outstanding hire after luring away Lions defensive line coach Terrell Williams, bringing in a tough, saavy defensive mind to run the defense next season.
The two have a history together with Williams having spent six seasons in Tennessee, with Williams working as the defnesive line coach there before ultimately being promoted to assistant head coach in 2023. He spent last season in Detroit as the Lions defensive line coach and run game coordinator, and on Wednesday, he was officially hired here in New England as the defensive coordinator.
He’s another guy who is stepping into a role as a more experienced coach than his predecessor, which will likely drastically alter the tenor of things in team meetings. The Patriots had one of the top defenses in the league in 2023 before taking a giant step back last season, and having someone of Williams’ caliber on the staff should be interesting to follow.
Former Lions coach Dan Campbell spoke highly of Williams back in December, believing that his preparation had been a big key to their success on defense at the time.
“I’ve known Terrell and long, long time and I just think that he’s an absolutely excellent coach, and (assistant defensive line coach) Cam (Davis) continues to grow as a coach as well and they work well together,” said Campbell via Jared Ramsey of the Detroit Free Press. “I think they give our guys the best opportunity to have success in a game which is what you want.”
For a team that went from a staff with a lot of question marks, Vrabel made two key moves that certainly crossed off two important openings they needed to fill.
The next step will be hopefully improving the roster, but until then, the outlook heading into next season suddenly feels a little different than it did just a few weeks ago.
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Evan Lazar on PFW wrote a piece on McDaniels and mentioned that McDaniels had spent a chunk of this past year traveling to meet with people on other teams, for the purpose of renovating/modernizing his offense. McDaniels spent much of his carreer in the offense in place in New England. It fit TB12 in that time span, but was hard to get WR, RB, TE to play in it. It’s hard enough to map colleges guys into the pros let alone have your offense compound that challenge. Anyhow, I was glad to hear that. Maye is a way different player… Read more »