Josh McDaniels, back with the Patriots, is tweaking the offense he's always known

New York Times

04-04-2025

FOXBORO, Mass. — During his forced hiatus, a 15-month reprieve from football after being fired midseason by the Las Vegas Raiders, Josh McDaniels did what football junkies do. He watched football.
A second head-coaching stint had gone badly enough that the Raiders ousted him after just 25 games, leaving McDaniels jobless in the fall for the first time since joining the New England Patriots as a low-level assistant for Bill Belichick in 2001.
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So, McDaniels spent the break watching other coaches. He was the guest of multiple coaches, sitting in on their meetings and watching how they ran practices, though he kept the teams he visited unnamed. (Hey, he learned from Belichick.) But it was a rare chance for him to see how so many operated.
McDaniels has long been defined by who he worked for and learned from. Of his 18 years as an assistant coach in the NFL, 17 were spent on Belichick's staff.
So, the unwelcome job status led to a chance to learn from more than just Belichick.
'I had an opportunity to see for the very first time in my life somebody else run a meeting, somebody else run a practice, somebody else coach a quarterback, and those were invaluable opportunities for me,' McDaniels said. 'I know I'll be a different person in terms of going forward because of the experiences that I've had an opportunity to see.'
That last sentence is important as we spin forward to what McDaniels means entering his third stint as the Patriots' offensive coordinator. The organization he's walking into now looks and feels much different than when he left after the 2021 season.
Mike Vrabel has given him the keys to an offense run by the most important person to the franchise — Drake Maye. But in turn, the expectation isn't that McDaniels returns and everything remains status quo. Vrabel surrounded McDaniels with a lot of assistants McDaniels didn't have a prior relationship with. Many of them come from schemes different from what McDaniels has run.
With that comes the reality that McDaniels' offense will come with tweaks in 2025. What he's expected to run with Maye this season is going to look — and sound — different from what he last used with the Patriots when Mac Jones was the quarterback.
'Definitely,' McDaniels said of the expected tweaks. 'That's the short answer. I think this is always a very popular question.'
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League rules mean the Patriots haven't gotten to talk football with their players yet. That's allowed for the first time on Monday. So, the offensive coaches have spent their time together learning from each other instead.
McDaniels started the meetings by explaining his verbiage for various formations and concepts. Then, he invited coaches to collaborate on different terminology. Maybe more importantly, they talked about ways to teach the various concepts given the wide background of this staff.
Passing game coordinator Thomas Brown spent three years with Sean McVay as the basis for his system. Wide receivers coach Todd Downing comes from the Shanahan tree after working with Kevin Stefanski and Robert Saleh. Quarterbacks coach Asthon Grant spent his five years in the NFL under Stefanski. Given that, there are a lot of schemes and styles to mesh together.
'So our language has been refined a little bit between last year with the time that I had and then this spring with the coaches,' McDaniels said. 'I think that's really getting streamlined. It's been great to have their perspective on it. Just being in the same type of language for my entire career has been good, and probably in some ways, it's been a little different than most coaches.'
Of course, it's not without risk. A blended offense without any fundamental or core beliefs isn't usually effective. But if done right, this Patriots offense should be able to take from the best parts of the McVay and Shanahan schemes while incorporating them with what McDaniels has used well before. And McDaniels' willingness to do that stands out to his new aides.
'What I appreciate from Josh is the willingness to actually be open to hearing ideas,' Brown said. 'I've been at some spots that were close-minded, and (the feeling was) we're going to stay in the same bubble. But I think first being able to hear him teach and talk about the origin of the offense and how it got to where it is right now is what I wanted to do first. I think it's always important to listen and understand before you open your mouth and start trying to communicate different ideas. But also being able to piece it around our quarterback, the players that we have, and figure out how to make it all blend together and flow smoothly.'
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Making that happen is on McDaniels' shoulders. He's the one who will have to decide which concepts from other schemes to incorporate.
But after a year outside the game, he's 'super excited' to be back. There will be a long road toward getting this offense ready for Week 1. But the first step, he said, has been successful, trying to trim down and build around the offense he's always had.
'You look at it, and you say, 'OK, does that make sense now?'' McDaniels said. 'It might have made sense 10 years ago, five years ago. How can we streamline it a little bit to make it make perfect sense and make it even better? … We've really done a good job of coming together. They've given me great input. We've taken a lot of their ideas and thoughts and tried to make it one.'