Here’s what Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels had to say during his press conference on Thursday September 11, 2025:On if he can walk us through what he saw from the Raiders game, and his decision to move more toward the passing game: “Obviously, we want to stay balanced as much as we can. That’s always been the way we have operated offensively. I know that’s the way we intend every game to go. I’ve said it a million times, I’ve never called a perfect game, and would love to be right on the perfect line of balance every week. When you look back at things, there’s things you wish you would have done a little different here and there. At the end of the day, I always want to try to do what’s best for the team. Some weeks, that’s better done than others. Always try to learn from previous experiences, and certainly would try to do a good job of maintaining balance every week that we can until, obviously, the game falls into a different category.On the question of if Drake Maye has too much on his plate, he had said he would evaluate everything, and what he made of what he gave him, and if he thinks that was an issue:“No. We haven’t given him anything more than what we’ve given him all year, which is not too much. I think we have to understand it’s his first game in our system. I think we all learned a lot from each experience we’ve had. Every practice, Washington, joint practice, Minnesota, preseason games, the little that we were able to work together, obviously. Then the first full game that we have an opportunity to go through our operation and see things for the first time and use our rules and follow our rules.”“Thought he made a lot of good plays, thought he made a lot of good decisions. But I’m focused really on the process of him getting better every day because I think the view of it is it’s got to be a long-term vision of where this guy is going to be. He’s going to be a really good player. There’s things that are going to happen in every game, especially at that position, that aren’t going to be perfect. It’s really hard to play a perfect game at that spot, let alone any spot. But, no, I think Drake does an incredible job of preparing. He’s got a great attitude and mindset, and we’re trying to do the things to help the team win, and we’ll continue to do that.”On the idea of being perfect has come up a couple of times with Mike [Vrabel], and if some of his conversations with Drake as he’s gotten to know him and how he handles failure to understand, ‘You could shoot for it, but that’s just never going to happen?’“Yeah, I think we’ve all said that. I think competitive guys want to do their best every week. If you have opportunities and you don’t make the play you think you can make, or we miss an opportunity offensively, I think all of us are disappointed. I think over time, you realize that it’s hard to play even a game that’s close to perfect in our league. It’s an imperfect game. There’s too many variables on every play. They have too many good players on the other side, too many good coaches on the other side.”“There’s always going to be difficult things you have to deal with. I think that’s another part of the process is learning how to handle something that didn’t go our way, but then being able to continue to play and find ways to be productive after that.”“That’s my job. Offensively, we have to do a good job of being able to handle the results, good or bad. We talk about having poise, whether it’s a good result or a poor one, and go down and score a touchdown and come back and try to go score another one and not get too high or too low one way or the other.”On what, in his mind, are the biggest areas that Drake needs the most work on to take the next step:“I’m literally, Karen [Guregian], I’m kind of the global view with him, the quarterback. I mean, quarterback is a really difficult position to play, and there’s a million things that you do every day, every play, between cadence and understanding the defense and your footwork and your throwing mechanics and reading coverage. There’s all kinds of things, pocket movement, play faking, handling pressures, seeing defenses. There can’t be one or two things. You know what I mean? I’ll never boil it down to that because that would be doing them a disservice.”“We have a lot of work that needs to get done every day. Yesterday was first and second down. Today is third down and short yardage. Tomorrow is going to be red zone, two-minute goal line. Each one of those brings a different challenge for a young quarterback. I would say the biggest thing for me is just he’s a young quarterback. He’s a young quarterback. He’s learning through all these experiences, and he’s the right guy. We’re going to have an opportunity to continue to grow and improve and get better. I think I would be really jumping ahead and jumping the gun if I tried to sit here and pinpoint one or two things. We work on a lot of things to try to get better every day, and he’s going to improve.”On how he balances keeping Drake safe but also using his athleticism.“Yeah, I thought he did a good job of keeping himself safe. The other day, there was a couple of things where he either ran on his own or pulled the ball and did some stuff with his legs, but I thought that was progress. There’s another area that obviously last year, he took a couple of hits that … inevitably his availability is what’s most important. Always trying to keep him healthy, do the best we can to protect him in the passing game, which I thought for the most part, we did a decent job of trying to do that. Then I thought he was smart when he used his legs.”On the fact Mike said something Monday about the play caller has to get the play in efficiently, and if there were any issues with the play not getting in on time:“I don’t know if he’s pinpointing one thing or another. Normally, we do a good job of getting the call in and have plenty of time at the line. That’s obviously my job if for some reason we didn’t, but we didn’t have any issues with the delays or anything like that.”On the three running backs, and what he learned about the three of them in this first game and how they can be a factor:“They need the ball more. That’s the best way to say it. Like I said, I try to learn from each experience. I love the guys in that room. They work really hard. They can do a lot of different things. I thought they did some things, but the way the game ended up going, really, we got sidetracked in the third quarter, and then the game changed a little bit. So, yeah, I can do a better job.”On the ground game and the fact it seemed there was some issues with the post-snap movement and some unblocked second-level defenders and if he saw it the same way, and also how he can go about improving those this week:“Learning from it, honestly. It’s really difficult to simulate movement sometimes in the running game without being in pads in a game against another opponent that does it differently than the team that you practice against all the time. We had a couple of opportunities to see things like that against other opponents in the preseason, which was really good for us. I thought we learned some things there, but the same thing. I think this is time on task, a great opportunity for us to see that in a live setting, obviously, against a good team.”“They did some things that pinched us off from getting up to the second level and the linebackers. Again, just, I’m excited and eager to use those experiences to improve. I think that’s really what my mindset is for our whole group. We certainly learned some stuff on Sunday.” On when it comes to using pre-snap motion and things like that, if that’s a build-up over the course of the season versus throwing that all in week one: “Yeah, there’s obviously using that, it’s fun. It can be something that, if you’re not careful, it could hurt you. It’s certainly going to change what you’re looking at over there on the defensive side. With such variables in week one and some of the unknown and uncertainty that goes along with the opening game, I don’t know how much we ended up doing it or not. I’m not sure exactly what the number was, but there’s definitely some pros and cons to it. You can gain advantages certainly some weeks more than others, depending on whether the team is a man-to-man team, a zone team, what happens post-snap for them, too. Then we have to be aware, obviously, of the adjustments that go along with that if things change when we move somebody. There’ll probably be weeks where we use it more and weeks where we don’t, based on what we think is hopefully best for the team.”On the fact Drake acknowledged yesterday on some of the throws that he’d like to have back, he felt rushed. And what he can do to make him more comfortable, or if it’s just a question of experience time with him:“I think some of that is probably just if there’s something… Look, I’ve always tried to do that with every guy I’ve had at that position. Everybody says, ‘Well, get them something easy early.’ The defense always has something to say about that, too. You can try. That doesn’t always do it. Sometimes, I’ve coached guys that like to get hit. I don’t want that to happen, but they did. They felt like they were into the game once they got popped once. I’ve had people that wanted something short. I’ve had people that were super aggressive and wanted to go down the field. I think the first play I ever called in my life, Tom threw a post. It was incomplete, but he threw it. I think for each guy, it’s different. I think we’re learning what do we need to do to make sure he feels good. I know he likes what we’re doing early because we’re in constant communication about that. It’s just finding a way to be more productive. If there’s any way, obviously, we can do that and help that process along, then we need to do it, and we should.”(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.)
About Ian LogueIan 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.View all posts by Ian Logue
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