On Thursday, Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels met with the media for the first time since returning to the organization earlier this year.
2025 will mark McDaniels’ third different stint in this role, with undoubtedly his greatest challenge in New England yet.
Since departing the organization for a second time to become the head coach of the Raiders ahead of the 2022 season, New England has gone 16-35 overall with no playoff appearances. His new boss, Mike Vrabel, will be the franchise’s third head coach in three years as they try to bounce back from consecutive four-win seasons in 2023 and 2024.
The offense bottomed out last season under one-and-done offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt, ranking dead-last in passing, 31st in total offense, 30th in scoring, 30th in the red zone and 29th on third down efficiency. And while the rookie quarterback was a bright spot once taking over the job in Week 6, he was often under too much pressure with few open targets to maximize his talent towards winning football games.
Outside of the addition of veteran right tackle Morgan Moses and whoever the Patriots might add in April’s NFL Draft (Will Campbell?), most of New England’s porous offensive line from 2024 is returning for 2025.
Despite their obvious problems, McDaniels said Thursday that he’s willing to give that unit a fresh start for this season.
“I always start each year with a fresh perspective,” said McDaniels. “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.”
And when it comes to the wideouts - the top-end of the room got better with the free agent signing of All-Pro Stefon Diggs, but the depth at the position remains the same with inconsistent players like Ja’Lynn Polk, Kayshon Boutte and DeMario Douglas all under contract and currently slated to return to 1 Patriot Place.
In McDaniels’ eyes, receivers and O-linemen are getting the same treatment.
“I’m excited about all those guys,” said McDaniels. “Everybody's got a clean slate, and to me, that's going to be an important message that I know [Vrabel] 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.”
McDaniels’ “clean slate” mentality is emblematic of the reflective calendar year he just lived through - his first as a mere civilian outside of the pro football world for the first time since the year 2000.
The 48-year-old told the media that he spent much of his time-off looking inward, figuring out the ways he could improve as a coach while also learning from the mistakes he had made in the past.
He didn’t outright mention the disastrous run he had in Vegas while referencing his past follies, but he didn’t have to. His 1-4 finish in 2022 to miss the postseason followed by a 3-5 start in 2023 had McDaniels fired from a head coaching job for the second time in his career.
“Yeah, I think it was something you don't ever think about doing, but 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,” McDaniels said of his time off. “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.”
Clean slate for offensive linemen.
Clean slate for wide receivers.
And a clean slate - and maybe a few new tools in the toolbelt - for the three-time Super Bowl champion OC looking to wash away the stink of Vegas after a year-plus of honing his craft.