Pats Pulpit
It’s been nearly two years since Josh McDaniels was fired as the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Now in his first year back in the NFL as the New England Patriots offensive coordinator, it just so happened the Raiders are first up on the schedule.
Getting ready to face his former team, McDaniels did not hint towards any extra motivation.
“Every year, every team is different. There’s obviously people on a lot of teams in the league that we all have familiarity with or know well,” McDaniels said on Thursday. “Certainly, there’s some people there that I still know well and have relationships with and hopefully will have forever. But just excited about our opportunity to get going. Excited to be home on opening day.”
After a one-and-a-half year stint as the Denver Broncos head coach in 2009-10, McDaniels’ time in Las Vegas ended in similar fashion. Following a 6-11 first year, McDaniels was dismissed halfway through the 2023 season with the Raiders sitting at 3-5.
Through both stops, lessons were learned the hard way for McDaniels.
“You go into every opportunity, and this is my next one, and you do the best that you can,” he said. “You learn more, honestly, when you fail than when you have success. I’ve always tried to take each opportunity as an experience that I can learn from. Some you learn more from than others.
“The one thing I know I’ve tried to get really good at over the course of time is just take the lessons and digest those, and use them for something positive. There’s no reason to have — I don’t harbor any ill will towards any of the things that haven’t worked out my career, and there’s been many of them. You do the best you can with what you have, and you give everything you have to the job that you’re in, and you hope it works out the best that it can.”
Back in a familiar spot on the sidelines of Gillette Stadium, McDaniels will have a familiar Week 1 matchup against his old team — which defensively is run by longtime NFL coach Pete Carroll and former Patriots assistant Patrick Graham.
The duos contrasting styles of Carroll’s zone schemes and Graham’s man-blitz tendencies will leave a level of unknown for McDaniels and his Patriots offense entering the week. But, the long-time coordinator is ready to handle whatever comes there way.
“It’s a good team with a lot of good players and obviously the unknown of how much is Pete’s influence with Pat and Pat’s influence with Pete,” McDaniels explained.
“I think opening day is really more about yourself and trusting your rules and how well have you ingrained those rules into your team so that whenever you get a look, a defense, a blitz, a coverage, you trust that you know what to do. And then you just got to follow your rules. And I think the second part of opening day is it’s...
