Pats approach to play-calling and handling Mac Jones baffles
Bill Belichick’s top lieutenants were polite, cordial, and didn’t stray too far from the script when asked how they were going to be deployed this season.
During a videoconference Monday, assistants from the offense and defense did their collective best to leave everyone in the dark.
And while Joe Judge fessed up to now coaching the quarterbacks, which was previously reported, and Matt Patricia did the same by admitting he was with the offensive line, the mystery around the offensive play-caller remained.
Is it Judge? Is it Patricia? Is it Nick Caley?
Might it be Bill Belichick? Or how about all of the above?
More to the point, how can they not know? Is Belichick really holding auditions, and the best man wins gets to call the plays for Mac Jones?
Judge wouldn’t budge on the subject.
“Look, I’ll tell you directly and honestly right now, nothing has been declared or decided, or voiced to me,” Judge said when asked point-blank if he was the play-caller. “In terms of who calls plays, that’s not the main focus for us right now. When Coach wants to go ahead and declare a role like that, he’ll tell us.”
The question is why the Patriots feel the necessity to continue to plead ignorance, and have everyone make like Sgt. Schultz from “Hogan’s Heroes,” holding to the “I see nothing, I know nothing” charade.
Is there even a benefit keeping it a secret?
If there’s some competitive advantage to not letting opponents know who’s calling plays, or running the offense, it really doesn’t apply in this case.
It’s not like anyone has any intel on Patricia, Judge or Caley when it comes to that facet of coaching. No one knows the tendencies of any of them when it comes to calling an offense.
As for the offense itself, that also isn’t much of a mystery, even if there are tweaks and adjustments made to better serve the personnel in 2022.
So no matter if it’s Patricia, Judge, Caley, or Belichick, the Patriots still have the element of surprise in play if someone is identified as the playcaller.
So what’s the point? Why keep it on the downlow?
Just to mess around with the media and with Patriots fans by extension?
It’s possible that Belichick wants to protect Caley, if he’s in fact the guy. It’s not out of the realm that they’re going to see how it goes with him, much like they did with Josh McDaniels when he first started, before eventually giving him the offensive coordinator title two years after Charlie Weis left.
But like it was with McDaniels, the cat’s going to be out of the bag once we see who has the play sheet during the preseason, or even during practices. We’ll know which coach Jones is taking his cues from.
It actually sounds more ludicrous having the assistants say they don’t know who’s doing what. It’s silly to have coaches who are currently running drills claim they know nothing about their jobs.
Not that Belichick cares what anyone thinks. He probably loved that both Jerod Mayo and his son Steve claimed Thursday they didn’t know their own job titles.
As Mayo said to the media: “You know the drill.” Indeed, we do.
So does anyone truly believe no one knows? Because if that’s the case, this is even more messed-up than anyone imagined.
It’s May. As Patricia said, they’re in phase two of the offseason program guiding players through drills on the field.
Surely, direction has to be coming from someplace. And this exercise is all much ado about nothing.
And yet, if what Judge said is true, about everyone having a collective hand in it, that’s also inviting disaster, especially with the offense.
Jones needs one voice, one play-caller in his head. He doesn’t need multiple cooks in the kitchen. And two of those cooks were failed head coaches. Two of those coaches, be it Judge or Patricia, have never called an offensive play. It’s a discouraging look no matter which way you slice it.
Let’s just say it’s hard to feel any better about the situation based on what either Judge or Patricia rolled out Monday. It’s hard to feel any better about Jones making the desired Year 2 leap based on how this appears to be set up.
When Patricia was asked why being involved with Jones and the offense should be considered a good thing, the Patriots former defensive coordinator fell back on Belichick’s coaching philosophy.
The six-time Super Bowl winning head coach gives his staff experience everywhere, so if someone is a good coach, it shouldn’t matter what group he’s with.
“One of the things I love about coaching is teaching. I love teaching the game. I really do,” he said. “When you teach and become a coach, for us, especially here … you learn about all facets of the game. You learn about offense
and defense and positions, and techniques and fundamentals.
“You put yourself in a situation where really you’re comfortable coaching anybody on the field at any time whatever side of the ball it is. That’s different here. It’s not like that everywhere. I really appreciated that education that I was allowed to have while I was here.”
Both Judge and Patricia said they weren’t interested in the big picture at this point in terms of identifying a play-caller. It was more about the present.
“Right now, it’s just about trying to learn the players we have, and what they do well going forward, and trying to make sure we put them in good positions,” said Patricia. “We’re not even really to that phase yet.”
Perhaps this will all work out. Perhaps having Belichick, Judge, Patricia and or Caley all managing Jones will be exactly what’s needed to have their second-year quarterback reach the next level, win games, and earn another trip to the playoffs.
In the end, success is all anyone really cares about. If Jones improves, and the Patriots continue to advance, the nuts and bolts of it don’t really matter.
It’s just hard imagining a happy ending at this stage.