Pats Pulpit
Downing joined the Patriots alongside head coach Mike Vrabel earlier this offseason.
After it failed to meet expectations during the 2024 season, the New England Patriots under new head coach Mike Vrabel opted to overhaul their wide receiver group from the ground up. That process included investments in both free agency and the draft, as well as the addition of a new position coach.
Todd Downing, Vrabel’s former offensive coordinator with the Tennessee Titans, was hired to replace previous wideouts coach Tyler Hughes in early February. Like his predecessor, Downing is a newbie as an NFL receivers coach: New England is the first stop in his coaching career that has him working exclusively with that particular position group.
So far, however, there have not been any issues. In fact, as DeMario Douglas pointed out, Downing has added a new perspective while drawing from what is an extensive overall résumé.
“I love TD. Great coach,” Douglas recently explained. “He was a quarterbacks coach, and he shows us what a quarterback does. And when we run our routes, he tells us what the QB’s reading, and how we should run our routes, what the quarterback sees. So, I feel like TD was a great add to this offense as receiver coach.”
Downing started out as an offensive quality control coach with the Minnesota Vikings in 2005 and since then has worked several jobs across the NFL. He coached quarterbacks and tight ends, and also worked as a coordinator on three occasions: in Oakland in 2017, in Tennessee in 2021 and 2022, and most recently with the New York Jets the last two seasons.
Now, Downing is back at the position level for the first time since 2020. He also is working in an unfamiliar setting under Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels.
“There are challenges throughout,” he said about his transition to McDaniels’ scheme. “Challenges sometimes can be misconstrued as a bad thing. I think challenges are good. It gets you outside your comfort zone.
“It might be the way we do something in the run game and ask our receivers to block that’s different than I’m used to, or maybe something that’s a route adjustment that I’m used to calling it this and now we’re calling it something different. But we’re all on the same page as a staff and we work very, very hard to make sure that we have one voice and solidified answers that we give to the players.”
In Downing’s case, the communication between him and his players seems to be going smoothly so far. Just ask DeMario Douglas, who was praising his new position coach’s hands-on approach earlier this month.
“Sometimes my route has to be faster, and then sometimes it has to be slower. I meet with TD every morning, and he breaks it down for me,” Douglas pointed out. “I feel like he makes it way easier to go out there and play with confidence.”
