Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Patriots assistant Joe Judge was not traveling to the East-West Shrine Bowl this week with the team’s coaching staff. Judge is expected to travel, and the story has been updated accordingly.
Light rain cut through a thick fog choking Foxboro when Bill O’Brien walked into Patriots headquarters Monday to end the team’s search for its next offensive coordinator.
O’Brien’s second interview was his final step toward a long-awaited reunion with the franchise that launched his NFL career. Soon, he would be hailed as the savior of an offense in need of resurrection. Because in 2022, the Patriots were dead on arrival.
They averaged 18.1 offensive points per game, and quarterback Mac Jones regressed despite having made, in Bill Belichick’s words, “dramatic improvement” over the previous offseason.
In the words of other Patriots, the offense was worse than numbers could capture. It was broken. Dysfunctional. Riddled with distrust.
Seeds of dysfunction were planted in the spring and summer, around the time Jones told the media he would teach his new quarterbacks coach, Joe Judge, the first of multiple comments he made that would irk higher-ups. Months later, members of the organization sensed Belichick’s offensive staff suffered from the same lack of cohesion players would display on Sundays. Soon enough, they knew they were right.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” one source said.
“It was disheveled,” another source said. “They were always scrambling to get things done.”
To peel back the layers of dysfunction, the Herald interviewed several sources inside and around the organization who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Patriots. Most were of the same mind: coaches and players collaborated in good faith, but over nine months, the relationships and processes underpinning the offense became so strained they engendered internal doubt about the greatest coach of all time.
“It’s always been about winning and doing what’s best for the team. I really believe (Belichick) when he says that,” one source said. “I just think he really didn’t understand how hard it was going to be.”
Or, in the words of another source: “I love coach (Belichick), but he f—ed us.”
For now, O’Brien’s offensive staff is under construction. Former offensive play-caller Matt Patricia is not joining his colleagues this week at the East-West Shrine Bowl, a possible sign of his uncertain future with the team, while Judge is expected to travel. How Belichick seals the cracks in the offense’s foundation will set the ceiling for a pivotal 2023 campaign following a three-year span when the Patriots lost more games than they won.
Six months before O’Brien’s return, Belichick repelled the first of countless media questions about Judge and Patricia taking lead roles on his offensive staff. He stood with his back to the players as they stretched on the first day of training camp, unaware of the internal strife ahead. Clear skies and a brilliant sun hung over Gillette Stadium.
“Look, I’m the head coach,” Belichick said. “Ultimately, I’m responsible for everything.”
New offense, new problems
Condensed formations, outside zone runs and bootleg play-action passes.
The base offense the Patriots drilled last spring and summer barely resembled the system Belichick had overseen for 23 years. Under Patricia and Judge, the Pats began to meld a reduced version of the playbook former offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels left behind with parts of Sean McVay’s Rams scheme. The Patriots intended to emphasize the outside zone runs already present in their playbook and install play-action passes from McVay’s offense, among other motions and formations.
The results were disastrous.
Over time, the staff tossed most of the play-action passes. That pivot, while necessary, further alarmed those who felt concerned about reduced volume of plays. One source described a typical training camp practice under McDaniels involving the installation of 25 pages worth of fresh run plays, another 25 of passing plays and upwards of 40 pages for the offensive line learning protection schemes.
Under Patricia and Judge? Those numbers were cut by roughly half.
“A lot of guys were getting worried because when we were in the middle of camp, we were wondering what the plan was for our offense. Because we hadn’t put enough install in,” a source said. “We had a couple protections, a couple core run plays, but our pass game didn’t have much in it.”
The goal of the revised offense, as players explained to the media throughout training camp, was to play faster. Reduce the reads, cut the concepts, practice those that were kept, simplify, simplify, simplify.
Except, none of the assistants had coached a Shanahan-style system before, like the Rams’, be it under McVay or any other disciple of Mike Shanahan, the namesake of the NFL’s most popular offense. The staff’s lack of understanding became a frequent source of frustration in meetings, when players with experience in Shanahan systems, of which there were at least a half-dozen, would raise questions about how to solve defenses they had faced with other teams.
“A lot of guys would ask, ‘Well, what’s going to happen if (the defense) does this?’ And you would see they hadn’t really accounted for that yet,” one source said. “And they’d say, ‘We’ll get to that when we get to that.’ That type of attitude got us in trouble.”
Eventually, the staff’s approach ran counter to the reason they had pivoted in the first place.
“By the end, they were just making 1,000 adjustments instead of building them in at the beginning,” one source said.
The root of most problems fell under Patricia’s domain.
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As reported by NBC Sports Boston, the Patriots reorganized their pass protection from a numbers-based system to a word-based system. The rules created confusion among the offensive linemen and put Jones under a daily barrage of pressure in the summer. He began anticipating pass-rushers or ducking at the first signs of danger during preseason games, habits that undermined the offense the rest of the year.
Jones finished the regular season as the NFL’s second-worst passer under pressure, per Pro Football Focus grades. He missed receivers downfield, most notably in December losses to Cincinnati and Las Vegas and a New Year’s Day win over an injured Miami team; silent killers in a season of loud mistakes.
Another glaring issue was the disconnect between the Patriots’ run and pass schemes, something rarely seen in New England and never with true Shanahan systems. According to Sports Info. Solutions (SIS), the Patriots called 83 outside zone or stretch run plays during the regular season compared to a league-low five bootleg, play-action passes; the most common and complementary passing scheme off those runs.
Later in the season, the Patriots executed more man-blocked runs featuring a pulling guard, but they hadn’t repped the corresponding play-action protections enough to call them in games. This limited their opportunities to exploit the most basic and consistent cheat code in offensive football. By the time they ramped up their play-action usage, Jones went 9-for-9 for 92 yards and a touchdown off play fakes in the regular-season finale at Buffalo.
The Patriots’ success off play-action and man-blocked runs (5.7 yards per carry, seventh-best) had some yearning for the old offense. What was wrong with that system?
“You tell me,” one source said. “I don’t know.”
Overstepping, underdelivering
Around early October, when Jones was sidelined by a high ankle sprain, players began to see less of his position coach in meetings.
Joe Judge, they later suspected, was in a long process of being phased out. It was a stark change from training camp when Judge would command meetings and share the play-call sheet in team periods with Patricia and Belichick. Judge also coached across positions in practice, forcing other assistants to occasionally correct his talking points to players during drills.
“I think there were times the coaches were frustrated, especially the ones who had been on staff in years past and knew what we had done,” one source said.
As Patricia came under outside fire as the face of the offense, Judge drew increasing criticism from within. Belichick would blast him in practice, and it wasn’t uncommon for Judge and Jones to trade profanity-laced outbursts. Jones’ trust in his position coach was effectively non-existent.
“Mac didn’t like him,” one source said. “At all.”
“(Judge) would speak extra loudly in meetings, trying to project like he was the guy,” another source said. “And I think that kind of rubbed people the wrong way.”
“A lot of people were frustrated with (Judge),” a third added.
After Jones returned from his high ankle sprain to play within a pre-planned rotation during a 33-14 primetime loss to the Bears, another Belichick decision that vexed players, the offense was exposed. The Patriots scored two offensive touchdowns over their next three games, close wins over the Jets and a 26-3 triumph over the rudderless Colts. The offensive line allowed 16 sacks, despite facing similar game plans in every game: zone coverage fronted by four-man rushes.
“Sometimes I would wonder, like, are we trying to screw this up on purpose?” one source asked.
The Vikings offered a brief reprieve on Thanksgiving, when the Patriots committed to helping fill-in right tackle Yodny Cajuste with constant chips and double-teams. The Pats lost, but the best version of Jones and the passing offense finally emerged with 382 yards, two touchdowns and zero interceptions. Might they build on that performance?
No.
Patricia’s cripplingly conservative play-calling reined the offense in during a 24-10 Thursday night home loss to Buffalo. Veteran wide receiver Kendrick Bourne became the public face of frustrations, when he told reporters post-game the Patriots needed to “scheme up better” and be more aggressive. Others in the locker room agreed, believing Patricia had called the game “scared” to avoid getting blown out.
“That game was bull—,” one source said.
In his own press conference, Jones called to be coached harder, a perceived spit in the eyes of the staff. Patriots players were given the following day off, a rare decision from Belichick, particularly after a loss. No meetings or film corrections. Just go home.
Eventually, the players returned, pulled away from a bad Cardinals team, face-planted in Las Vegas and dropped two of their last three. The offense rode wide receiver Jakobi Meyers and Rhamondre Stevenson into the ground.
Meyers, who according to sources played through a small tear in his knee midseason, finished as the team’s leading receiver for a third straight year. Stevenson totaled 156 more touches than the next closest skill-position player, an unprecedented gap under Belichick.
“He wore down,” one source said of Stevenson, “and he was hurt more than he let on.”
Both failed the Patriots in the mind-numbing play of the NFL season, two laterals in a last-second loss at Las Vegas clinched by Chandler Jones’ 48-yard fumble return for a touchdown. Still, teammates and coaches backed Meyers and Stevenson knowing they had been boxed in the same impossible position the offense found itself all year long: fighting a two-front war against a Sunday opponent and an enemy from within.
Turning the page
On Aug. 8, Patriots center David Andrews gathered the offense after its worst offensive practice of training camp. Temperatures had climbed close to 100 degrees on the field, and the offense completely wilted, the first sign it would be unable to withstand the heat of an NFL regular season.
Mac Jones had dropped back to pass 23 times against the first-team defense, completed 10 throws, taken four would-be sacks and scrambled once. All three quarterbacks had thrown interceptions.
Andrews was animated, hot at the center of his huddle, as he unleashed frustrations for more than a minute. In the following days, a quieter, calmer message reached the players: patience. Not with each other, but Patricia and Judge.
A new reality for the offense under their leadership had begun to sink in, inexplicable as it was. Players would practice, meet, study and play harder, even if it felt hopeless. And like any square peg jammed into a round hole, cracks in the surrounding structure became inevitable.
Enter O’Brien.
Members of the organization feel Belichick was lucky to land the 53-year-old near the end of his contract with the University of Alabama. O’Brien checks every box: experience in New England, coaching quarterbacks and leading offense. O’Brien is a good coach, and another example of Belichick reaching into his past for a solution to a present-day problem.
What comes next is on them both. Internally, there’s hope O’Brien’s arrival will bring sunny skies over the offense again, even if the price of that hope was a wasted season long anticipated by outsiders, headlined by two assistants and brought about by the greatest coach of all time.
