News item: Josh McDaniels returns for his third stint as Patriots offensive coordinator, this time as Mike Vrabel's right-hand man.
This was absolutely the right move by Mike Vrabel. It gives the head coach — and quarterback Drake Maye — the best chance at long-term success.
Sure, there might have been younger candidates with higher upside, like 28-year-old Vikings assistant offensive coordinator/QBs coach Grant Udinski, who Vrabel interviewed for the job this week. And Vrabel going back to his previously preferred route to the Sean McVay/Kyle Shanahan tree made a lot of sense. And it could have been awesome.
But for how long?
That's the key question, and perhaps why Vrabel arrived back at McDaniels.
I wrote a column on Sunday about Vrabel needing to learn from his staffing missteps with the Titans — mostly at offensive coordinator, offensive line and special teams. Vrabel will always be fine on defense, that's his side of the ball. He's continuing on with Jeremy Springer and Tom Quinn on special teams, a unit that saw vast improvement last season. So two checkmarks.
McDaniels returning makes it 3 for 3 for Vrabel. As long as he allowed McDaniels to have heavy input on the offensive line coach, the Patriots should be cooking with gas.
Back to the continuity point.
When Vrabel was the Titans' head coach, he started out with Matt LaFleur — one of those young hotshots from McVay's staff — as his offensive coordinator. Good idea, but he got the Packers' coaching job after one season (Titans were 27th in points). Vrabel promoted Arthur Smith to take LaFleur's place, and he continued on with the same offense. That worked even better as the Titans advanced to an AFC Championship in one season, had the No. 1 seed in another and were 10th and 4th in points. But, predictably, Smith was poached as the Falcons' head coach after the 2020 season.
After that, Vrabel's offensive magic ran out. He promoted Todd Downing to OC the next two seasons and the Titans dropped to 15th and then 28th in points. Downing was fired and Tim Kelly was promoted. Titans were 27th in points, and Vrabel was fired after the 2023 season.
It's an oft-told story in the NFL. Head coaches without an offensive background often run into trouble as their offensive coordinators get head coaching jobs.
Bill Belichick was fine when he set up the succession plan of Charlie Weis to Josh McDaniels to Bill O'Brien to McDaniels. When McDaniels left for the Raiders job, Belichick was done in by the sloppy transition to Matt Patricia/Joe Judge, and then O'Brien with a mismatched offensive line coach.
John Harbaugh, a special teams coordinator by trade, was teetering with the Ravens for a stretch thanks to his issues at OC. He had a procession of Cam Cameron, Jim Caldwell (Super Bowl winner as interim after Cameron was fired), Gary Kubiak, Marc Trestman, Marty Mornhinweg and Greg Roman, before Todd Monken jump-started the offense the past two seasons. Monken is now a head coaching candidate and Harbaugh could be looking for another OC shortly.
With McDaniels' hiring, Vrabel isn't making the same mistake twice.
While I'm sure McDaniels would love a third crack at being a head coach — and he's still only 48, so you never know — it will likely take some time for that to happen again. That means McDaniels is in the fold for at least five years, if not longer.
And that's exactly what Vrabel needs, and it's perfect for Maye.
McDaniels is an unquestioned developer of quarterbacks — the rare combination of QB developer and gameplanner/playcaller. He made it work, to some extent, with Matt Cassel, Jimmy Garoppolo, Jacoby Brissett, Cam Newton and Mac Jones. In 2021, he took a rookie QB, a bunch of new free agents, a target corp of Jakobi Meyers, Kendrick Bourne (new from Shanahan), Hunter Henry (new), Brandon Bolden, Nelson Agholor (new) and Jonnu Smith (new), and produced an offense that was sixth in points, 15th in yards and won 10 games and made the playoffs.
The 2021 Patriots scored 24 or more points 11 times. The 2024 Patriots did that twice last season (24 and 25 points). So I think any myth of McDaniels' offense being too difficult has been dispelled.
One of McDaniels' strengths, like Vrabel, is identifying a player's strengths and weaknesses, and using those to his advantage. For example, Bourne needed to be spoon-fed the offense and was more of a visual learner. McDaniels and then-receivers coach Mick Lombardi (who could be available from the Rams staff) spent a lot of time with Bourne. His 2021 season (55 catches, 800 yards, 5 TDs) are still his career best. Think Bourne is excited?
Heeesssssss backkkkkkkk!
— Kendrick Bourne Poly (@BournePoly11) January 21, 2025
And, trust me, McDaniels — who wanted to draft Lamar Jackson, and tailored his offense to Newton — is going to take full advantage of Maye's various athletic talents. And McDaniels is only going to do what the players are capable of executing, which was a huge problem in Maye's rookie season with Alex Van Pelt. If the Patriots' can't block it, McDaniels is not going to run it.
Here's McDaniels with Julian Edelman talking about how to develop young quarterbacks:
McDaniels' comments on developing a young quarterback like Maye:
“I think you have to have a plan. And that obviously starts from the head coach’s perspective,” said McDaniels. “And you have to be able to agree on how you’re going to unveil that thing to the player and ultimately bring him along. You know you were a young player that needed to make progress every step of the way. And this is no different. It’s just there’s so much notoriety and so much attention on the quarterback position.”
“So if they’re not talking about your arm angle, they’re talking about your footwork. If they’re not talking about that, they’re talking about your eyes or your read or how you navigated the pocket. And there’s a lot of things that go into playing it well. But at the end of the day, I think you got to take the player where he’s at when he comes in, whether that was [Matt Cassel] or [Jimmy] Garoppolo or [Jared] Stidham or [Jacoby] Brissett, or Mac [Jones], Aiden O’Connell, you got to take the player where he’s at. They’re all at different spots. They all have been taught different things. They’ve all digested different amounts of information. Some have played in different systems than yours. Some have played in maybe some that were a little bit more like yours.”
“And you just got to figure out, ‘All right, what do they know? And what am I going to try to push forward to get him to progress the quickest?’ ‘I think I can get this and this done in OTAs.’ Okay, great. ‘Cadence, play calls, footwork.’ All right, good. Then in training camp, now I got to get him to see different coverages and understand defenses a little bit more. And protections. And then move forward, ball security. And then the red zone is a different animal, and third down, and two-minute offense. So there’s a lot of things that go into it.”
“But I think it’s just having a really good feel for where’s the player at. Can’t just keep throwing stuff at him. We always talk about it. They have a bucket. You guys all had a bucket, and yours was a big bucket at the end. You could handle whatever we gave you. Well, when you take a young quarterback, it’s more like a cup. You got to put some stuff in his cup, and when it gets to the top, you got to stop. You know what I mean? And then make sure that he has this and he can do it well.”
“And then, okay, so then when he’s ready for more, then you get him a bigger cup. And then hopefully, he ends up with a bucket, and you got a bunch of stuff in there that you can do well. But there’s no shortcut. There’s no shortcut to it. And I think knowing where the player’s at is really important.”
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This might not be the splashiest hire. You might have wanted some more excitement and a fresh-looking offense. Understandable.
But this feels like the right hire, for Vrabel and Maye. Add in that McDaniels, as a two-time head coach who was truly Belichick's head coach/offense during the latter years, can free up Vrabel to do his HC thing/help the defense, and the Patriots seem to be set up for long-term success. The chance to have the same head coach, offensive coordinator and quarterback together for a decade-plus is extremely rare, and seemed to work out fairly well the last time it happened here.