New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said his year away from the NFL was a blessing.
“I think this was—it’s something you don’t ever think about doing, but I would say it was just 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,” he said. “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 [to] 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 ... 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 to get better at, that I need to to to start thinking about incorporating.”
McDaniels said he had opportunities to visit other teams at the college and pro levels, and for the first time in his career, observe another coach as he ran meetings, practice, and developed a young quarterback. He also noted that he has had time to pick the brains of his position coaches and glean as much information as possible from them. McDaniels said the opportunities were “invaluable” and that he would be a different person because of them.
Specifically, McDaniels said his offensive language would change. “Our language has been refined a little bit, between last year with the time that I had, and then this spring with the coaches,” he said. “Being in the same type of language for my entire career has been good, and probably in some ways it’s been a little different than most coaches ... What’s most important is that the players can digest whatever it is we want to do.”
McDaniels also praised his position coaches for helping him streamline the language of playcalling. He said that having the perspective of different coaches is important because the position coaches are the ones who will have to teach the concepts to players in the position group meetings. The coaches, therefore, should be confident that they know the terminology of the system.
This is McDaniels’s third stint with New England. After playing wide receiver in college and a brief stint as a graduate assistant at Michigan State, he joined the Patriots as a personnel assistant in 2001. He became a defensive assistant in 2002, then was promoted to quarterbacks coach in 2004. He became the team’s offensive coordinator in 2006.
In 2009, McDaniels was hired as the head coach of the Denver Broncos. His early tenure was infamously marred by a tense relationship with then-Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler; Cutler was traded ahead of the 2009 season; a second scandal plagued his tenure in 2010, when a video assistant was found to have recorded a walkthrough practice of the San Francisco 49ers ahead of their Week 8 matchup. McDaniels also struggled to lead his team on the field, garnering a record of 11–17 in two seasons. He was fired in December of 2010. He served briefly as offensive coordinator of the St. Louis Rams in 2011 before returning to his previous position with the Patriots.
McDaniels served with New England from 2012–2021. He was hired as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022. But he struggled again to win on the field, posting a 9–16 record in two seasons. He was fired in October 2023.
