The Patriots coaching staff is preparing for the offseason workout program, which begins for head coach Mike Vrabel's team on April 7.
On Thursday, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and the offensive assistants spoke to the media for the first time since joining Mike Vrabel's coaching staff. After a year off from coaching, McDaniels is returning for his third stint as Patriots offensive coordinator, where he'll be the primary voice in second-year QB Drake Maye's ear. The longtime NFL coach spoke about using his year off as a learning experience, his approach to building the offense around Maye, and other hot-button topics around the Patriots offense.
"Couldn't be more excited to be here and be back in this organization and working for Mike \[Vrabel\]," McDaniels said. "Super excited to be working in football again. The process of getting acclimated with Mike \[Vrabel\] and the staff is obviously an exciting one for me."
Specifically to the Patriots talented second-year quarterback, McDaniels described his initial impressions of Maye in one word: smitten. That's a feeling that many Pats fans have when it comes to the future of the franchise, who had a promising rookie season after the Patriots selected Maye with the third-overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
"I'm smitten by the young man in terms of just his personality. We've had an opportunity to spend some time that has nothing to do with football with one another, which has been great," McDaniels said of Maye. "Next week and beyond will be really fun to get to know him from a football perspective. I couldn't be more excited about the young man that we have."
The number one question on everyone's minds is how the Pats OC will adapt his system to fit Maye's skillset. Maye's dual-threat abilities to make plays in and out of structure are slightly different from most of the quarterbacks McDaniels has worked with in the past. McDaniels made it clear that the Patriots will run an offense that fits the current personnel on the roster.
"There's the language, and then there's the strategy part. The language is how you talk. The strategy is all based on your players and what do we have? What are our strengths? How do we maximize the personnel on our team and our offense? That part is going to be different," McDaniels said. "We have a language, and every offensive and defensive system has a language. You have to decide the way you want to speak in terms of calling things and naming things. Our language has been refined a little bit."
Along with tweaking the scheme to fit the Patriots current personnel, McDaniels also discussed what he learned in his year off from coaching football. The Pats offensive coordinator said he had an opportunity to go to various college and NFL programs to see how they do things, whether coaching style or different schematic innovations.
"It was a really healthy opportunity for me to go back and look at what I've done, what I've been a part of, and then what else is going on in the league right now that I need to get better at, that I need to start thinking about incorporating," McDaniels said. "There are different things that people are using schematically that are having a lot of success. There's some trends like there always are that are en vogue right now.
I got an opportunity to go to a few different places last year. There were some great coaches that were very welcoming, college and pro. I had an opportunity to see for the first time in my life somebody else run a meeting, somebody else run a practice, somebody else coach a quarterback. Those were invaluable opportunities for me."
Over the last several weeks, the Patriots coaching staff has been working diligently on building a playbook so that when the players get in the building for voluntary workouts next week, the staff is on the same page to teach the system to the players. McDaniels will be the lead architect and the offensive play-caller, but the Pats offensive staff has several coaches with coordinator or head coaching experience. For example, pass-game coordinator/TEs coach Thomas Brown, O-Line coach Doug Marrone, and wide receivers coach Todd Downing are former play-callers. Downing coordinated Vrabel's offense in Tennessee for two seasons.
As the staff has built the offense, McDaniels has taken input from all the Patriots assistants, while the coaches have worked on "streamlining" the language to help players grasp the system. With the teaching period of the offseason set to begin next week, McDaniels and the offensive assistants are ready to get the offense up and running.
Here are four more takeaways from Thursday's media availability with the Patriots offensive assistant coaches.
**1\. McDaniels Discusses the Coaching Staff's Role in Personnel Decisions**
Although there's about to be some semblance of football at One Patriot Place soon, the player acquisition period of the offseason is still ongoing.
The NFL Draft is in roughly three weeks, and the Patriots have a huge asset in the No. 4 overall pick at their disposal to add an impact player. Furthermore, as we saw with the trade of second-year QB Joe Milton, trades and free-agent signings can still happen at any time. When it comes to adding players to the roster, it makes sense that the coaching staff would have a say in which players the team targets so that those players fit their scheme. McDaniels spoke about the input he and the other coaches have had on personnel in his press conference.
"Our job is to give them our honest opinion and input on the evaluations that we see, then they have the hard job figuring out how to get them on the team. So yeah, it's been great. We've had plenty of opportunities to look at players and compare and contrast across positions, what have you, then give them our input and then let them go to work," McDaniels explained.
Obviously, great coaches figure out ways to adapt their system to great players. Still, it's important to put some emphasis on scheme fit when acquiring talent, especially when it comes to a high draft pick or a lucrative free-agent signing. Based on the responses from McDaniels and others, the process for the Patriots has been collaborative this offseason.