Here’s what New England Patriots quarterbacks coach Ashton Grant had to say during his interview with reporters on Wednesday, June 10th, 2026.
[Question was omitted ahead of when the footage cut into the interview:]
“…It’s all about learning what to do, and how do you fit in the system? And then as you continue to grow through the system, it’s, ‘Okay, how do I operate this at a high level?’ And so I think we’re trying to weaponize Drake’s mind and all the quarterbacks’ minds, as opposed to just being, throwers of the football. We want to be operators of the offense.”
On the fact there were a couple of plays yesterday, Ashton, where the guys hurried to the line, but then didn’t hurry to snap it. It was sort of like, ‘Okay, let’s see what’s happening here.’ and if that’s an example, maybe of what he’s talking about, where he’s able to kind of maybe assess and adjust if needed and go from there:
“I think that’s a cool tool that we talked about, Coach Vrabel and Coach McDaniels in the offseason where, ‘Let’s just go on the ball and not give Drake a play and let him practice solving the problems himself.’ So sometimes there’ll be a play called with some of the up-tempo stuff. And then other times it’s just, ‘Hey, on the ball, here’s a formation, and you figure it out.’ And so then we can go into the meeting room and kind of talk about what he was thinking, why he was thinking. If it was a great answer, you give him a pat on the back. And if it’s something we might want to tweak or adjust, we talk about it. But it’s easy to say solve the problems. But if you never let them practice solving problems, then, you’re just talking to a cement wall. So we’re giving him opportunities to go out there and do those things.”
On if that happens in a game:
“We’ll see, how it looks. And that happens from time to time. Some quarterbacks around the league run the 2-minute drill by themselves. And I’m not saying that’s something that we’re gonna do or not do. We’ll have those conversations at a later date. But I mean, we’re prepared for it and preparing for it in case we ever have to use that tool.”
On if he handled it okay yesterday:
“Yeah, I think he did a good job.”
Pats on the back?
“Yeah, pat’s on the back for sure.”
On the fact he said that was the brainchild of Josh and Mike just kind of discussing, ‘Hey, why don’t we try this?’
“Yeah, it was just something that we all came up with. Like, if we’re going to put the onus on the quarterback to have more responsibility, let’s practice giving him the freedom to have that responsibility just to exercise those things. When you’re a quarterback and you’re on the ball and you have somebody telling you what to do, it’s easy to operate. You can kind of tone the thinking down a little bit, so to speak. But when you’re in charge of the operation, the communication, getting all of the other 10 guys on the same page, but you have no play call, then it’s pretty cool to see him start to calculate, okay, what is the matchup? Do I think a pressure’s coming? Do I have time to get the ball off? What play do I want to get to? And so for him to be tuned in, it gives him some ownership of the offense as well.”
On when it comes to Drake’s maturation process, considering he has so much control over the pass protection, where does that kind of fall into that growth in his second season, and would he see the protection and his ability to kind of control that, and if that’s another thing he’d like to see maybe take another step:
“Yeah. I think everything that you see in terms of the offensive system is something that we’re trying to put in Drake’s hands and we have since day one. It’s just the consistency of the operation. So as we continue to mature through the system, and through the growth of what we’re trying to do, I just think you’ll see more instances of us getting it right, so to speak.”
On going back to what A.J. was saying last week about how Drake’s, stepping up in the meeting rooms as well, like interrupting Josh, and if he can add some more background on just kind of how he’s stepping up like that:
“I think what we’re seeing is a player who’s starting to come into his own in terms of his comfort in this building and in this organization and his ownership of the offense. I think the head coach and Josh do a great job of empowering him. Giving him those opportunities to speak up. But a lot of that is the study that he puts in and, and really the extra meetings, the time he spends with Josh to get a full understanding of exactly what we’re trying to do with everything in offense in terms of the protection variations, in terms of the route concepts, everything we’re doing, him and Josh should be in lockstep. And so when he sees the opportunity to speak up in a way that the players can understand it from his perspective, I think he’s going out of his way to do that more often.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This transcript was done based on the available footage and is subject to typographical errors. If you spot anything, please let me know in the comments below.)
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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.
