After their long-awaited reunion on Tuesday, this a lot may be mentioned for the Patriots and new offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien.
The honeymoon must be short-lived.
Coming off their second shedding season in three years, the Patriots’ coaches started getting ready for the draft this week. Starting Friday, assistants can be teaching one crew on the East-West Shrine Bowl in Las Vegas, an annual school showcase for draft prospects that features 4 practices and a sport on Feb. 2. Over the subsequent few months, the workers can be laborious at work fixing the franchise’s worst offense since 1995 by DVOA.
O’Brien and Patriots coach Bill Belichick have absolutely mentioned what workers modifications might or must be made heading into the 2023 season, the primary of three vital areas they need to handle earlier than gamers return.
1. Reshape the offensive workers
Two weeks in the past, NBC Sports Boston reported members of the Patriots’ offensive workers could be reshuffled, and O’Brien’s return ought to guarantee former offensive play-caller Matt Patricia and quarterbacks coach Joe Judge are moved. According to a supply, Patricia is undecided about his future in New England and should not coach within the East-West Shrine Bowl. NBC Sports Boston beforehand reported Patricia could possibly be on his method out.
Like Patricia, Judge got here below regular hearth final season for overseeing the statistical regression of second-year quarterback Mac Jones. Considering O’Brien’s expertise teaching quarterbacks, from Tom Brady to Deshaun Watson and Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young, it causes O’Brien will resume his previous submit in New England and take cost of Jones’ improvement.
That leaves the query of whether or not Patricia will nonetheless function the crew’s offensive line coach, an important non-coordinator place on workers; a truth mirrored by the very fact O-line coaches are sometimes the highest-paid assistants within the NFL. During his offensive coordinator search, Belichick could have interviewed a possible Patricia substitute: University of Oregon affiliate head coach/offensive line coach Adrian Klemm. After turning into Belichick’s first-ever draft choose in New England, Klemm performed 5 seasons on the Patriots’ offensive line and kicked off his teaching profession in 2008.
While Klemm has spent most of his time patrolling school sidelines, he labored with the Steelers offensive line from 2019-2021, together with one 12 months as Pittsburgh’s lead offensive line coach. O’Brien additionally shares deep private ties to Saints offensive line coach Doug Marrone. Though assuming Marrone’s contract has not expired, New Orleans might block him from making a lateral transfer to New England.
Elsewhere on the offensive workers, huge receivers coaches Troy Brown and Ross Douglas will take main roles on the East-West Shrine Bowl, the place Brown would be the West Team’s head coach and Douglas the West crew offensive coordinator. Would Belichick belief both coach to guide one other place?
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If so, two different offensive coordinator candidates, Vikings huge receivers coach Keenan McCardell and Cardinals affiliate head coach/huge receivers coach Shawn Jefferson, may draw curiosity as their potential substitute. Jefferson’s future in Arizona stays in limbo whereas the Cardinals conduct a head-coaching search. (Of notice: Brown has beforehand coached the crew’s operating backs and Douglas labored with the defensive workers in 2021, his first 12 months in New England on a Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship.)
Tight ends coach Nick Caley is an unknown. Caley’s contract in New England is expiring, and he interviewed for the Patriots’ offensive coordinator job, in addition to the Jets’. He is the longest-tenured offensive assistant on workers.
2. Commit to an offensive system
Now, which offense do the Patriots wish to run?
Does Belichick insist on melding the previous system, one constructed out for two-plus many years below Charlie Weis, O’Brien and Josh McDaniels, with a facsimile of a Shanahan system? Or does he let O’Brien remold the offense on his personal? In his last seasons, McDaniels operated because the “head coach of the offense,” free to sport plan each week as he noticed match, offered it fell inside Belichick’s bigger imaginative and prescient of how the Patriots would strategy their subsequent sport.
Is O’Brien granted the identical freedom? If so, it might be stunning to see O’Brien contain lots of the Shanahan-themed ideas the Patriots tried and failed to include final 12 months (specifically huge zone runs and bootleg play-action passes). O’Brien has no expertise in a Shanahan scheme. Furthermore, close to the tip of his first season because the offensive coordinator at Alabama, O’Brien acknowledged it was tough to study and train the Crimson Tide’s system, his first new offense in additional than a decade.
After he left New England in February 2012, O’Brien ran variations of the Patriots offense at Penn State (2012-13) and with the Texans (2014-20). Odds are O’Brien returns to the roots of the system he left behind and incorporates a number of of the faculty ideas he realized upon arriving at Alabama in 2021 with the assistance of his new quarterback.
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3. Reach out to Mac Jones
So, the Patriots have selected a training workers and a system. What’s subsequent?
Players.
Before they carve out plans without spending a dime company and the draft, O’Brien and the Patriots ought to join with their present quarterback. Belichick cooled on Mac Jones publicly final season, from noting his dramatic enchancment within the offseason to refusing to decide to him because the crew’s starter past one week. Hours after the season led to Buffalo, Belichick was requested if Jones would be the Patriots’ quarterback subsequent season.
He mentioned, “I think Mac has the ability to play quarterback in this league.”
Jones was additionally visibly pissed off with the teaching workers in a number of video games and requested to be coached more durable. Comments like these, together with one from May when Jones mentioned he would train first-year quarterbacks coach Joe Judge, rankled higher-ups within the group. Like his new offensive coordinator, the time for Jones to return to work and attempt to mend fences would be the sooner the higher.
There’s a brand new season at stake.
Source: www.bostonherald.com