New England Patriots - NESN.com
The Patriots announced their complete coaching staff on Wednesday, and the takeaways were rather obvious.
New England valued familiarity, as nine total staffers (John Streicher, Tony Dews, Terrell Williams, Ryan Cowden, Zak Kuhr, Todd Downing, Clinton McMillan, Jason Houghtailing and Scott Booker) previously coached under Mike Vrabel with the Tennessee Titans. Vrabel was also able to retain and/or add some extremely experienced assistants, with four members of the staff (Josh McDaniels, Doug Marrone, Thomas Brown and Ben McAdoo) previously held head coaching jobs elsewhere.
It’s not all about the bigger names, however.
The Patriots clearly believe there is strength in numbers, as they retained a large staff that includes several general offensive and defensive assistants — which will not only allow them to delegate responsibility throughout the week but also leave a contingency plan in place.
Yes, a contingency plan.
Riley Larkin, Chuckie Keeton, Vinny DePalma, Kevin Richardson and Milton Patterson might not feel like significant pieces to the puzzle just yet, but they could eventually rise to larger roles.
NESN’s George Balekji and Keagan Stiefel (hello) discussed those new additions on Friday’s episode of “Foxboro Rush,” with the latter explaining why those lesser-known names are so valuable.
“I don’t think Josh McDaniels is leaving for a head coaching job anytime soon, but when people ultimately leave, you have these general offensive assistants so you can just elevate them into roles,” Stiefel said. “(Larkin and Keeton) might start working with the quarterbacks, and then maybe they’ll move over and they’ll work with wide receivers or running backs, or whatever it might be — tight ends.
“Doug Marrone isn’t going to be around forever, right? He’s 60 years old. He’s been doing it for a long time, so at some point he’s going to want to retire and enjoy his life. I would imagine, football coaches are weird, so maybe he won’t, but when he moves on one day, they’ve got two guys who can jump right in and take over… The Patriots are setting themselves up so if somebody goes and gets a job somewhere else, for whatever reason, they’ve got people who can be elevated in those positions. It’s another really smart way of doing it.”
The Patriots have found themselves in sticky situations in the past, as smaller coaching staffs became the norm over the latter years of Bill Belichick’s tenure.
It’s not like they didn’t fall into this method a time or two, though.
Brian Belichick, Mike Pellegrino and DeMarcus Covington were all general coaching assistants on the staff in 2018 — the last time this squad won a Super Bowl. Brian Daboll, Nick Caserio and McDaniels all held those roles during the first part of the dynasty, before moving on to literally run franchises.
New England certainly didn’t put together a perfect staff, but this was one way of hopefully building something that has legs moving into the future.
You can listen to the latest episode of “Foxboro Rush” on YouTube and Spotify.
