Pats Pulpit
McDaniels will return to the Patriots for his third stint as offensive coordinator.
The New England Patriots have found their next offensive coordinator, and it’s their old one. Josh McDaniels, who already held the position twice before, will return to fill the vacant spot on new head coach Mike Vrabel’s staff.
McDaniels originally joined the Patriots as a personnel assistant in 2001 and five years later was named offensive coordinator a first time. While he briefly left for unsuccessful stints as Denver Broncos head coach and St. Louis Rams OC, he returned to New England in 2012 and together with quarterback Tom Brady led the offense to its three most recent Super Bowl wins.
McDaniels left again in 2022 to join the Las Vegas Raiders as head coach, but just three years later is back in Foxboro. Let’s assess what the move means for the team.
During his first round of media interviews after his introduction as head coach Mike Vrabel described what his offense will ideally look like. The key word he mentioned was versatility, something an offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels will be able to provide.
“The versatility. The versatility of scheme,” he said. “We need to make sure the players on our team are able to execute what we’re asking them to do. And if they can’t, then we can adjust the scheme.
“We want to be versatile. We want to be flexible. But coming back down to being a great teacher, being a great developer, and then inspiring players to do their job better by making a connection. That’s the point.”
In his 13 total years running the Patriots offense, McDaniels has shown the ability to reinvent his unit oftentimes on the fly. He was at the forefront of the NFL’s spread revolution of the mid-2000s, incorporated two-tight end sets in the early 2010s, shifted to a ground-and-pound approach during the 2018 Super Bowl run, and designed a complex quarterback run game with Cam Newton in 2020.
What the 2025 Patriots offense will look like remains to be seen, but McDaniels has a deep playbook to offer and vast experience as a play caller.
In 12 of his 13 previous seasons as offensive coordinator, McDaniels also served as the Patriots’ quarterbacks coach. Whether or not he will hold that same title in 2025 as well is not known at the moment, but he will work closely with the team’s quarterbacks regardless of nomenclature.
The most important among those QBs, of course, is Drake Maye. The Patriots’ first-round draft pick last year already showed considerable promise as a rookie and now will get to work with one of the most successful offensive coordinators in NFL history.
McDaniels himself, meanwhile, has shown he can get the best out of his quarterbacks. Obviously, Tom Brady stands out, but he also helped develop Matt Cassel, Jimmy Garoppolo, Jacoby Brissett — a free agent to be currently still residing...
