Once again, Bill Belichick is turning to a failed, fallen branch of his own coaching tree. Bill O’Brien will follow in the footsteps of Josh McDaniels, Joe Judge and Matt Patricia as the New England Patriots’ offensive playcaller in 2023.
That means the man who sent the Houston Texans into a multi-year tailspin from which they have yet to recover will now be tasked with restoring Mac Jones’ value as an NFL quarterback. Given the way 2022 unfolded, it could be the right decision.
O’Brien hasn’t been seen on Sundays since his 2020 firing. His exit in Houston was ignominious. After stepping into a leadership void to assume general manager duties, the mostly successful head coach proved he was unqualified to build an NFL roster. He traded away star players, overpaid the ones he needed to stay and generally dismantled a playoff roster en route to an early October firing.
Thus, he joins a lineage of offensive assistants who’d failed elsewhere before returning to New England. But his past suggests his redemption may follow the McDaniels arc rather than the plummeting elevator inside which Patricia and Judge remain trapped.
Judge and Patricia, a special teams and defensive coordinator in their prior New England stints respectively, were tasked with pushing Jones forward in 2022. They failed mightily — Jones was one of the five worst quarterbacks in the league last season. This wasn’t entirely unexpected. Not only were both men coordinators in entirely different phases of the game, but neither won more than six games in a season in five combined years as a head coach.
O’Brien, conversely, was an offensive assistant under Belichick. As three seasons as the team’s quarterbacks coach (2008-10) New England fielded a top 10 offense every year. His 2010 passing offense was the most efficient in the league. In 2011, he was promoted to offensive coordinator and the Patriots finished second in the NFL in yards gained and third in points scored en route to the Super Bowl.
After that, he went to a Penn State program crushed by sanctions from covering up decades of systematic child abuse and sexual assault. He led the Nittany Lions to a pair of winning seasons, coached Matt McGloin to his best performance as a college quarterback and set the stage for Christian Hackenberg to somehow become a prime NFL prospect. Granted, both those guys stunk in the pros, but O’Brien helped them look great at the time — exactly the kind of boost Jones needs.
Next came the Texans, who he spurred to a seven-win improvement in year one. O’Brien is responsible for 60 percent of the franchise’s playoff games in its 21-year history. He took teams led by Brian Hoyer and Brock Osweiler to the postseason before drafting Deshaun Watson, the now-disgraced quarterback who would later face more than 20 accusations of sexual misconduct stemming from what the league would later describe as “predatory behavior.”
That said, the Texans’ offenses weren’t great. The Hoyer/Osweiler shows were predictably bad. Even the good years with Watson weren’t that impressive — Houston never cracked the top 12 in yards gained in any of those seasons. O’Brien’s team was, as a whole, slightly below average. The Texans ranked 18th in expected points added per play from 2016 to 2019.
A look into his past suggests he’ll have to change his game if he’s going to succeed in Foxborough. O’Brien’s passing games have generally been dominated by an alpha dog wide receiver, whether that’s been Wes Welker, DeAndre Hopkins (who he ran out of town in Houston for some reason) or Allen Robinson. From reporter Doug Kyed, most recently of Pro Football Focus and a man you should most definitely hire if you have the opportunity (he’s great):
Wes Welker dominated in Bill O'Brien's offense from 2009 to 2011. Outside of DeAndre Hopkins, the most yards a Texans receiver had out of the slot in a single season was Cecil Shorts with 443 in 2015.
Hopkins topped out at 483 (of 1,373) yards out of the slot in 2019.
— Doug Kyed (@DougKyed) January 24, 2023
The Patriots don’t have that. They may not even have Jakobi Meyers on the roster as he stares down free agency and what’s likely to be a solid payday thanks to a limited crop of veteran wideouts. O’Brien’s going to have to take a quarterback who regressed in almost every way in 2022 and a wide receiver corps that currently has these players under contract:
- DeVante Parker
- Kendrick Bourne
- Tyquan Thornton
- Ty Montgomery
- Tre Nixon
- Scotty Washington
and spin that into gold, all with Belichick looking over his shoulder.
That’s a tough assignment. So was restoring Penn State in the middle of roster-reducing sanctions. So was taking the reins of a 2-14 Texans team.
O’Brien has proven he can handle this job as long as he’s not in charge of building an NFL roster. Over his last 15 years of work he’s proven he can make good things better and bad things, at least, pretty good.
That may not be the greatness to which New England was once accustomed, but it would be a massive step up from the quarterback play it got in 2022. If O’Brien can unlock Mac Jones’ pretty-goodness, he’ll have once again shown he’s an effective coach.
