Bill Belichick might be overseeing an offensive overhaul. He might be doing no more than giving new names to his plays. But he’s not telling anyone what he and the New England Patriots are up to.
Shocker: he’s keeping things hush-hush.
With former Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels taking the reigns for the Las Vegas Raiders, the Patriots have a new brain trust on offense: Joe Judge and Matt Patricia. Those two coaches seemed to have introduced a transition with new terminology, according to receiver Kendrick Bourne.
Belichick was asked about players commenting on the new terminology amid this turnover of offensive coaching staff.
“We’ve had a lot of changes offensively in the last couple of years. Good time to streamline things – we did that defensively a couple years ago (in 2019 and 2020). Feel like this is a good time to do it offensively,” Belichick said Tuesday before practice. “So, there’s an element of that every year.”
How involved is quarterback Mac Jones in the process?
“We’ll do everything we can really, to make it as good for him as we can – he’s our quarterback. Lot of components to that, I don’t know,” Belichick said.
Bourne said that the change was to a new scheme. Is that true? Have the Patriots changed their scheme?
“I don’t know. We make changes every year,” Belichick said.
How big are those changes this year?
“I wouldn’t be able to rank them,” Belichick said.
So will we see new plays? Will we see a new system? Or are the Patriots simply renaming plays they already have in their playbook?
“I don’t know,” he said. “If you’re asking if we’re going run the Veer offense, no. Not really sure what we’re talking about here.”
So the Patriots are streamlining the language and the playbook. But they are not making the move to the Veer offense.
Got it.
The transition should be an interesting one to follow. New England is already experimenting with new players (Devante Parker) and old players in new positions (with the team flipping Trent Brown from right tackle to left and Isaiah Wynn from left tackle to right). So clearly, the Patriots aren’t opposed to doing some things differently.
