It took Alex Van Pelt roughly 24 hours to land the Patriots’ offensive coordinator job.
He began interviewing Wednesday night time and accepted the job Thursday night. Van Pelt, 53, spent the previous 4 seasons because the Browns’ offensive coordinator, however didn’t name performs or have remaining say underneath head coach Kevin Stefanski. Now, he’s in cost.
Looking forward, listed here are the highest objects on Van Pelt’s to-do listing after an already quick begin in New England:
Build a system
Van Pelt should choose an identification.
The Patriots haven’t efficiently established an offensive identification since 2021, their solely playoff marketing campaign of the previous 4 years. Mayo has mentioned the Patriots will stay a “game-plan team” underneath his management, which means offensively they need to proceed to prepare their personnel groupings, schemes and formations week-to-week across the defensive weaknesses of their subsequent opponent.
Van Pelt, nonetheless, has been devoted to a West Coast passing offense for many of his teaching journey. A league supply who labored with Van Pelt says he picked up different influences throughout his 19-year profession, however Stefanski’s management over Cleveland’s offense clouds how Van Pelt may select to run issues in New England. His solely different expertise as an offensive coordinator got here with the Bills in 2009.
That expertise is unlikely to tell us about Van Pelt’s imaginative and prescient for the Patriots, contemplating how a lot the league has modified since then, and the actual fact he rotated by means of quarterbacks Ryan Fitzpatrick, Trent Edwards and Brian Brohm that season. Based on his teaching historical past, anticipate Van Pelt to drag from Stefanski and former bosses Zac Taylor and Mike McCarthy when constructing his new offense. The offense he develops ought to affect gamers the Patriots pursue this offseason in free company and the draft.
Hire an offensive line coach
No place coach is extra pivotal to a soccer workers than an offensive line coach.
Offensive line coaches are chargeable for the most important place teams on each staff and sometimes the highest-paid non-coordinators. Their gamers set the desk for each offensive play, run or go. Reportedly, Van Pelt already has a person in thoughts.
According to ESPN, the Patriots are concentrating on ex-Seahawks and Rams assistant Andy Dickerson to be their new offensive line coach. Dickerson coached Seattle’s offensive line the previous two seasons after becoming a member of the group as a run sport coordinator in 2021. He labored because the Rams’ assistant offensive line coach from 2012-2020, following prior stops with the Jets and Browns.
7 issues to learn about new Patriots offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt
Last season, underneath Dickerson and ex-offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, the Seahawks completed because the Fifteenth-best run-blocking staff within the league, per Pro Football Focus, and Seventeenth-best by ESPN’s run-block win charge. Seattle ranked even decrease in go safety, registering twenty eighth at PFF and twenty fifth in response to ESPN.
In 2022, Dickerson’s first season as O-line coach, the Seahawks carried out equally in go safety and when run-blocking; rating eighth and twenty fourth, respectively, per ESPN, and twentieth and 18th, by PFF.
Dickerson’s expertise aligns with Van Pelt’s, as a coach who’s spent a number of years instructing variations of the Shanahan offense. Over the previous two seasons, nonetheless, Van Pelt’s offense executed much more man-blocked run schemes, whereas Dickerson’s Seattle line zone-blocked most of its speeding performs. They have by no means coached on the identical workers.
Dickerson received his first full-time NFL job with the Patriots, working as a soccer operations assistant in 2005. He left in 2006 to turn into a training assistant/defensive high quality management coach with the Jets. In 2009, Dickerson joined the Browns, who gave him his first offensive line job a yr later. He ultimately returned to the Jets for another season en path to Los Angeles.
Fill out the remainder of the workers
The Patriots’ holdover assistants are operating backs coach Vinnie Sunseri, broad receivers coach Troy Brown, tight ends coach Will Lawing and offensive line coach Adrian Klemm.
Lawing could go away on his personal, as a longtime Bill O’Brien disciple who adopted O’Brien to New England final yr and watched his boss settle for the offensive coordinator job at Ohio State two weeks in the past. Klemm was not anticipated to return on the finish of final season, and the Patriots’ curiosity in Dickerson signifies they intend to maneuver on.
If Van Pelt can pull assistants with him from Cleveland, Browns assistant Jonathan Decoster may very well be a candidate to educate tight ends or help with the offensive linemen. Decoster has expertise in each roles on the school degree.
In home, that leaves Sunseri and Brown, who haven’t any prior connections to Van Pelt. Most Patriots wideouts have underwhelmed underneath Brown’s three-year run because the receivers coach, save for Jakobi Meyers, sixth-round rookie Demario Douglas and Kendrick Bourne’s 2021 breakout marketing campaign. If Van Pelt opts to go in one other course, he’ll haven’t any scarcity of former colleagues to name on from his 19 years within the league.
Patriots rent ex-Browns OC Alex Van Pelt as new offensive coordinator
That mentioned, Browns assistant broad receivers coach Callie Brownson is an fascinating identify to look at. In 2022, Brownson grew to become the primary girl to function a place coach throughout a regular-season NFL sport, when she changed ex-Browns tight ends coach Drew Petzing throughout an away sport Petzing missed after the delivery of his first little one. Brownson served as Cleveland’s assistant broad receivers coach final yr.
Connect with the entrance workplace
Here, once more, Van Pelt has a head begin.
Over his 5 years in Green Bay as an offensive assistant (2012-17), Van Pelt overlapped with Patriots director of scouting Eliot Wolf. The two later linked in Cleveland in 2020, earlier than Wolf left to affix New England’s entrance workplace. Whether he meets with Wolf, director of participant personnel Matt Groh or each, Van Pelt have to be aligned with a entrance workplace tasked with discovering him gamers who will execute his imaginative and prescient in his first season as offensive coordinator.
Does Van Pelt desire a strong-armed quarterback who can prolong performs or a middle-of-the-field operator with reducing precision? An enormous, burly offensive line designed to maul opponents or an athletic group higher suited to zone-blocking? A receiving corps composed of speedsters or one which boasts numerous talent units, like a basketball staff?
From quarterbacks to offensive linemen and receivers, operating a brand new offense would require prioritizing new traits when roster-building. The sooner these conversations occur, the higher.
Source: www.bostonherald.com