What comes next for new OC Van Pelt?
It took Alex Van Pelt roughly 24 hours to land the Patriots’ offensive coordinator job.
He started interviewing Wednesday night and accepted the job Thursday evening. Van Pelt, 53, spent the past four seasons as the Browns’ offensive coordinator, but did not call plays or have final say under head coach Kevin Stefanski. Now, he’s in charge.
Looking ahead, here are the top items on Van Pelt’s to-do list after an already fast start in New England:
Build a system
Van Pelt must settle on an identity.
The Patriots haven’t successfully established an offensive identity since 2021, their only playoff campaign of the past four years. Mayo has said the Patriots will remain a “game-plan team” under his leadership, meaning offensively they should continue to organize their personnel groupings, schemes and formations week-to-week around the defensive weaknesses of their next opponent.
Van Pelt, however, has been faithful to a West Coast passing offense for most of his coaching journey. A league source who worked with Van Pelt says he picked up other influences during his 19-year career, but Stefanski’s control over Cleveland’s offense clouds how Van Pelt might choose to run things in New England. His only other experience as an offensive coordinator came with the Bills in 2009.
That experience is unlikely to inform us about Van Pelt’s vision for the Patriots, considering how much the league has changed since then, and the fact he rotated through quarterbacks Ryan Fitzpatrick, Trent Edwards and Brian Brohm that season. Based on his coaching history, expect Van Pelt to pull from Stefanski and former bosses Zac Taylor and Mike Mccarthy when building his new offense. The offense he develops should influence players the Patriots pursue this offseason in free agency and the draft.
Hire an OL coach
No position coach is more pivotal to a football staff than an offensive line coach.
Offensive line coaches are responsible for the largest position groups on every team and often the highest-paid non-coordinators. Their players set the table for every offensive play, run or pass. Reportedly, Van Pelt already has a man in mind.
According to ESPN, the Patriots are targeting ex- Seahawks and Rams assistant Andy Dickerson to be their new offensive line coach. Dickerson coached Seattle’s offensive line the past two seasons after joining the organization as a run game coordinator in 2021. He worked as the Rams’ assistant offensive line coach from 2012-20, following prior stops with the Jets and Browns.
Last season, under Dickerson and ex- offensive coordinator Shane Waldron, the Seahawks finished as the 15thbest run- blocking team in the league, per Pro Football Focus, and 17th-best by ESPN’S run-block win rate. Seattle ranked even lower in pass protection, registering 28th at PFF and 25th according to ESPN.
In 2022, Dickerson’s first season as O-line coach, the Seahawks performed similarly in pass protection and when run-blocking; ranking eighth and 24th, respectively, per ESPN, and 20th and 18th, by PFF.
Dickerson’s experience aligns with Van Pelt’s, as a coach who’s spent several years teaching variations of the Shanahan offense. Over the past two seasons, however, Van Pelt’s offense executed far more man-blocked run schemes, while Dickerson’s Seattle line zoneblocked most of its rushing plays. They have never coached on the same staff.
Dickerson got his first fulltime NFL job with the Patriots, working as a football operations assistant in 2005. He left in 2006 to become a coaching assistant/defensive quality control coach with the Jets. In 2009, Dickerson joined the Browns, who gave him his first offensive line job a year later. He eventually returned to the Jets for one more season en route to Los Angeles.
Fill rest of staff
The Patriots’ holdover assistants are running backs coach Vinnie Sunseri, wide receivers coach Troy Brown, tight ends coach Will Lawing and offensive line coach Adrian Klemm.
Lawing may leave on his own, as a longtime Bill O’brien disciple who followed O’brien to New England last year and watched his boss accept the offensive coordinator job at Ohio State two weeks ago. Klemm was not expected to return at the end of last season, and the Patriots’ interest in Dickerson indicates they intend to move on.
If Van Pelt can pull assistants with him from Cleveland, Browns assistant Jonathan Decoster could be a candidate to coach tight ends or assist with the offensive linemen. Decoster has experience in both roles at the college level.
In house, that leaves Sunseri and Brown, who have no prior connections to Van Pelt. Most Patriots wideouts have underwhelmed under Brown’s three-year run as the receivers coach, save for Jakobi Meyers, sixth-round rookie Demario Douglas and Kendrick Bourne’s 2021 breakout campaign. If Van Pelt opts to go in another direction, he’ll have no shortage of former colleagues to call on from his 19 years in the league.
That said, Browns assistant wide receivers coach Callie Brownson is an interesting name to watch. In 2022, Brownson became the first woman to serve as a position coach during a regular-season NFL game, when she replaced ex-browns tight ends coach Drew Petzing during an away game Petzing missed after the birth of his first child. Brownson served as Cleveland’s assistant wide receivers coach last year.