FOXBOROUGH — We heard from Josh McDaniels and then some of the offensive positional coaches on Thursday, and here are some of the takeaways:
MCDANIELS
Sounds obviously excited about Drake Maye in their limited personal interactions
"I haven't had a chance to really do football with him yet, Tom [Curran], but that'll come. We'll have plenty of time here coming up next week, but 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 I think has been great. Very beneficial and productive to just to get to know him, who he is, what he's all about, what he cares about, where he's coming from, his family, Ann Michael [Hudson], wedding plans, all that stuff. We've kind of had an opportunity to talk about those kind of things. So, I think next week and beyond will be super fun for me to really get to know him from a football perspective, start teaching our terminology and language, seeing how he learns best and how he acclimates, but I couldn't be more excited about the young man that we have."
McDaniels kept reiterating that all the players will get a fresh start, especially on the offensive line
"I always start each year with a fresh perspective. I wasn't here last year, and I know every player on our team is going to get a fresh start. We're going to give everybody our best, and our job is to take the guys that we have on our offense and make them better. I think that's a huge part of an assistant coach's job is to develop the players that you have. I know our staff is excited to start doing that next week, and we'll get to know them more as we go, but I'm confident in the guys we have working right now offensively on our staff that are preparing to teach these guys the things we want to do. Then it's a process. We'll get to know them more as we go, but we’re excited. I've met most of them and looking forward to meeting the rest of them."
McDaniels said they are running his system but tweaks have been made thanks to input from the other assistant coaches.
"So, our language has been refined a little bit between last year with the time that I had and then this spring with the coaches. I think that's really getting streamlined. It's been great to have their perspective on it. Just being in the same type of language for my entire career has been good, and probably in some ways, it's been a little different than most coaches. So, these guys have done a tremendous job of helping us streamline it. What's most important is that the players can digest whatever it is we want to do.
"But there's the language, and then there's the strategy part. The language is how you talk; the strategy is all based about your players and what do we have, what are our strengths, how do we maximize the personnel that's on our team and on our offense? That part is going to be different like it is every year. Whether you – ’07 was different than ’12, ’12 was different than ’17, everything was different than 2020. 2021 is going to be different than this year. So, the strategy and what we end up doing eventually will be all about what's best for our players and how we can maximize the guys here.
"I can't say enough about the offensive staff. So, when we come together, we've talked about every aspect of our offense. So, you look at it and you say, ‘Okay, does that make sense now?’ It might have made sense 10 years ago, five years ago. How can we streamline it a little bit to make it make perfect sense and make it even better? Even though we were doing that year to year, I think it's always great to have guys that have a different perspective because they're the ones that are going to teach it when they go into the individual position room. So, it's important for them to feel confident in the way they know it. It doesn't matter how I know it if they're in a different room. So, we've really done a good job of coming together. They've given me great input. We've taken a lot of their ideas and thoughts and tried to make it one. Whenever the ball gets placed down on the field, it's going to be our offense, it's our terminology and we'll all know it by then, but there's going to be a little bit of an adjustment period for everybody."
McDaniels traveled around during the past year
"I would say it's a blessing to have the time to go back and look at what you've been through in terms of the changes and different highs, lows. You look back at the past in terms of what we've done schematically and what the league is doing now strategically. I had a really good opportunity last year to watch football without a lot of deadlines, which was a new, interesting opportunity for me and just see different things that were coming up throughout the course of the league. There's younger quarterbacks that are playing a little earlier than maybe they were 10, 12, 15 years ago. There's different things that people are using and doing schematically that are having a lot of success. There's some trends like there always are that are kind of, I'd say, in vogue now. Whether they stay in vogue for long, I don't know, but it was just 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.
"Then obviously, this opportunity with Thomas [Brown], Todd [Downing], Ashton [Grant], Doug [Marrone], Hoss [Jason Houghtaling], Kugs [Robert Kugler] and the guys we have here, I mean, it's been tremendous for me to have this opportunity to really pick their brains, see what they know and glean as much information from them as I possibly can. I got an opportunity to go to a few different places last year; I won't say where those were, but there were some great coaches that were very welcoming. College, pro, I had an opportunity to see for the very first time in my life somebody else run a meeting, somebody else run a practice, somebody else coach a quarterback, and those were invaluable opportunities for me. I know I'll be a different person in terms of going forward because of the experiences that I've had an opportunity to see."
McDaniels vouched for former Raiders Mack Hollins, Robert Spillane and Marcus Epps
"Yeah, I was fortunate to be around all three of them. Good football players, super individuals, really high character, care a lot about the little things and the details. They set a high bar for the standard in their rooms and what they expect from themselves, and I think that then relates to their teammates on their respective sides of the ball. I think all of them are about the right stuff. They play hard, they do the things that it requires to be good, and I'm excited about having an opportunity to work with them again here."
McDaniels excited for Stefon Diggs
"I’m excited about all those guys. Everybody's got a clean slate, and to me, that's going to be an important message that I know Coach is going to give on Monday, and we're going to echo that. I've always – it's best to really refrain from making assessments on people until you really have them in your room, until you get to know them, until you coach them, until you put them on the field. You're running drills and running things offensively, and then you have an opportunity to correct things, see if they can fix it, make the corrections and get better. So, we have some young players that certainly have a lot of ability, and we have some guys that have some experience, some of which I have a little experience with. KB [Kendrick Bourne], Mack [Hollins], some of those guys. I'm starting to get to know some of these other guys that are trickling in here now, and I’m super excited to work with all of them, I really am.
"Stef [Stefon Diggs] is a unique individual, a unique player. He’s got a really good skill set; he’s been a very productive player for a long time. I’m excited about his addition. My brother had an opportunity to coach him last year in Houston, so I have a little bit of insight into what he's like day to day, and I'm really excited about having him here.
OFFENSIVE LINE COACH DOUG MARRONE
Doesn't sound overly concerned about arm length.
I think for a long time having done it ... you create these measurements or parameters, and you just look at them. You say, Listen, you know, these are, these are what we have. These are kind of standard. These are kind of things you have to look at. I've always looked at it as you know, something that do you play that way? Or do you play longer? You play to the max of what you have, or you play under what you have? I see, I've had guys in the past that have played for me, that have, you know, 33-34 and haven't played like that. I've had some guys that had some shorter arms and played like they had longer on. So I just think it's something that you bring up, that you bring up that you just want to make sure that you evaluate and see if it affects the player in a positive way or negative way."
Marrone says the player performance is on him.
"If I could get the players play the best to their ability and that I'm a big believer in development, you know, and developing the players and taking them. I've always said coaching to me was, you know, the definition of being able to take a player where it can't take himself, and I think it's a great foundation, something that I'm going to take a lot of pride in. It's going to start with getting to know the players and what they do. It's going to start with a foundation, and try to pick what they do well and implement those into what they do technically. So trying to get the most out of someone at the end of the day, and if I don't, but they don't play, you know, to the level that people expect them to play. The first person I look at it is myself. I'm the one that didn't do a good job. I got to be the one that, you know, has to be able to help them attain, you know, to get to the best of their ability. "
Arm length an issue for Campbell?
"I've not noticed being an issue for him at the level that he's at."
(The last part was interesting, leaves open that it might be an issue in the NFL)
In relation to Membou, Marrone talked about how they moved Jammal Brown from the right to left side.
PASS GAME COORDINATOR/TEs THOMAS BROWN
On Josh McDaniels...
"So what I appreciate about Josh is the willingness to actually be open to hearing the ideas. I've been in some spots where it's, you know, closed-minded, we're gonna stay in the same bubble. I think being able to first hear him teach/talk about the origin of the offense, how we got to where he is right now, was what I wanted to do first. I think it's always important to listen and understand before you open your mouth and start trying to communicate different ideas. But I think being able to also understand how to piece it together around our quarterback, the players that we have, and trying to figure out how to make it all blend together with flow smoothly.
How the pass-game coordinator thing is going to work.
"So, I mean, it's obviously my main focus on this, be able to coach a tight end group, but also being able to provide ideas, get feedback on general philosophy thoughts between myself and the rest of the staff, how we organize the meeting, schedule, what we meet about, and also, even from an installation standpoint, so being able to kind of work pretty closely with Josh and the rest of the staff to, like I said, try to figure out to put our guys in the best spot for success."