Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels has a new set of students this season, including quarterback Drake Maye and a bunch of the team's assistant coaches.
Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels has a new set of students this season, including quarterback Drake Maye and a bunch of the team's assistant coaches.Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
FOXBOROUGH — Patriots offensive line coach Doug Marrone, 60, is a football lifer. He played 10 years in college and the pros, and has coached since 1992, with two stints as an NFL head coach.
Yet Marrone is getting an education this spring, his first with the Patriots. In all his years of football, he doesn’t have much experience with the offensive scheme run by Josh McDaniels.
“We as coaches, we go through the same thing [as players], the details and the fundamentals and learning and everything,” Marrone said Monday. “It’s been exciting for me to go in and embrace that, learn something that might not be the same that you’ve done for all these past years, then be able to go out there and teach it, which is a great challenge.”
After a year of West Coast offense under former coordinator Alex Van Pelt, the Patriots are transitioning back to the familiar Erhardt-Perkins offense that Bill Belichick and McDaniels ran to mostly great success from 2000-23.
The scheme used to be embedded deep in the Patriots’ DNA. Offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia and running backs coach Ivan Fears coached it for decades. Youngsters such as McDaniels, Brian Daboll, Nick Caley, and Chad O’Shea were raised in it and promoted through the Patriots’ system.
But in today’s NFL, the Patriots’ scheme is not common. Daboll (Giants) and Caley (Texans) might be the only other offensive play-callers to still use elements of it.
Only six Patriots players have much experience with the scheme — five who played for McDaniels (Mike Onwenu, Hunter Henry, Rhamondre Stevenson, Austin Hooper, and Kendrick Bourne), plus Stefon Diggs, who played for Daboll in Buffalo.
None of the Patriots’ three quarterbacks has any experience in the system. Neither do the Patriots’ offensive coaches.
None previously worked with McDaniels or coached the scheme.
“It’s refreshing, first of all, to learn something new,” said wide receivers coach Todd Downing, 44, an NFL coach since 2005. “I find it as a challenge to become an expert on things as quick as I can. And if I don’t have knowledge of the system, I can’t give it to the players, so I’m working hard just like everybody else to make sure that I know the details and the ins and outs of the system.”
Everyone's learning from Josh McDaniels.
Everyone's learning from Josh McDaniels.Barry Chin/Globe Staff
Thomas Brown, the tight ends coach and passing game coordinator, is mostly a disciple of the Sean McVay/Kyle Shanahan offense. Downing and running backs coach Tony Dews coached the West Coast offense in Tennessee, with Downing earning his way to offensive coordinator. Quarterbacks coach Ashton Grant coached the West Coast system in Cleveland. Marrone is mostly a West Coast guy, as well, though he became familiar with the Patriots’ system last year when working at Boston College under Bill O’Brien.
Before the players arrived for workouts in April, the Patriots’ coaches spent February and March learning the new scheme from McDaniels.
“Josh is an incredible teacher,” Downing said. “It might be the way we do something in the run game and ask our receivers to block that’s different than I’m used to. It may be something that’s a route adjustment, I’m used to calling it ‘this’ and we’re calling it something different. It’s been a great process, and just really cool to see him have the inclusion and welcome us all and all of our ideas.”
With his staff coming from different backgrounds, McDaniels said it is important to let his coaches have input.
“I think it makes a lot of sense for me to basically learn from them and what they can teach me,” McDaniels said before Monday’s practice. “We’re putting plays in today that I don’t have much experience doing, but I know they’re good for our team and I know these guys have a lot of experience doing those things.”
Brown said he’s not worried about learning a new scheme, since this is his ninth offense in 15 years as a coach.
“I’ve been some spots where it’s close-minded, ‘We’re going to stay in the same bubble,’ ” said Brown, who was interim offensive coordinator and head coach in Chicago last year. “But being able to first hear [McDaniels] teach, talk about the origin of the offense, how we got to where he is right now, is what I wanted to do first.”
Though the offensive staff doesn’t have much experience together, it has a lot of experience in the league. McDaniels, Marrone, and Brown have been head coaches and coordinators, while Downing has been a coordinator for the Raiders, Titans, and Jets.
“All of us kind of being in there together, bouncing ideas off each other, that’s been really good for me as I continue to learn,” Dews said. ”That’s what it’s about, is collaborating and figuring out what best fits our guys now."
It’s not often that an entire coaching staff has to learn a new offense along with the players. But the Patriots are embracing the challenge.
“I think challenges are good, because it gets you outside your comfort zone,” Downing said. “But we’re all on the same page as a staff and we’re working very, very hard to try to make sure that we’re one voice and a solidified answer.”
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com.