O’Brien stresses ‘clean slate’ for Patriots
FOXBOROUGH — The Patriots apparently hired Bill O’Brien this offseason for three main roles:
1. Run the offense.
2. Coach the quarterbacks.
3. Erase everyone’s memory.
Patriots players reported for duty Monday as they began their nine-week voluntary offseason program. O’Brien played the role of Tommy Lee Jones, scrambling everyone’s brain waves with a little red flasher as they walked through the doors at Gillette Stadium.
The 2022 season — the 8-9 record, the offense’s struggles under Matt Patricia and Joe Judge, Mac Jones’s inconsistent play and outbursts at the coaches — is not to be spoken of ever again.
“I think the big thing for us right now is everybody starts with a clean slate,” O’Brien said Tuesday, meeting with New England reporters for the first time since he was hired in late January. “Each year in the NFL is different, so what you did in the past, whether it’s a player or a coach or anybody in the organization, really has no bearing on what happens moving forward.”
This week marked the first time that Patriots coaches were allowed to work with players, though on-field work doesn’t happen for another two weeks. The theme of the offseason is “a fresh start.”
O’Brien used the phrase “clean slate” four times during his media availability, and “every year is different” three times. It was a marked difference from Bill Belichick’s response at the owners meetings three weeks ago, when he said “the last 25 years” gave him confidence that the Patriots are headed in the right direction.
“It’s really not about anything what’s gone on in the past,” O’Brien said. “It’s about moving forward. That’s one of our themes on offense is to move forward.
That’s what we’re doing.”
O’Brien’s forward-facing message underscores how dysfunctional the Patriots’ offense was last year under Patricia and
Judge. Patricia still doesn’t have an NFL job
for 2023, while Judge will be back with the Patriots, but in a role that has yet to be defined.
And O’Brien’s return to Foxborough after 11 years away (two years as Penn State’s head coach, seven as the Texans’ head coach, and two as offensive coordinator at Alabama) underscores how important he is to the Patriots’ fortunes in 2023.
They haven’t made major upgrades to an offense that finished 22nd in points (excluding points from defense and special teams), instead making modest additions such as JuJu Smith-Schuster, Mike Gesicki, and right tackle Riley Reiff.
O’Brien, who has 14 years’ experience as a head coach or offensive coordinator (including 2009-11 with the Patriots), is apparently the big addition that is supposed to make the offense click.
And he is here to make sure the Patriots have all of the insight they need on this year’s draft, to make sure they hit on a few picks, and keep Robert Kraft happy.
“Certainly through free agency, whether it was through his draft prep with the Texans, then here the last couple of years at Alabama, he knows those players very, very well,” Patriots personnel director Matt Groh said. “And then he’s in the SEC, where there are a lot of good players.
“Coach O’Brien, he’s a wealth of knowledge and has been a really, really good friend and resource for myself.”
If anyone will benefit from a “clean slate” in 2023, it’s Jones, whose standing as the franchise quarterback went sideways in 2022 because of shaky play, a sprained ankle, and a tough relationship with Patricia and Judge. But O’Brien, an Andover native who still has large amounts of family in New England, threw a little cold water on the idea that he came to New England to coach Jones, or that he has much of a relationship with the third-year quarterback. The two crossed paths briefly at Alabama while Jones was preparing for the 2021 NFL Draft.
“I basically met him, he talked to me about the generalities of the offense, and that was about it,” O’Brien said. “I think the big thing about coming back was to come back and work for a great organization, great owner, great head coach.
“I’m from here, my family lives here, my wife went to Boston College, I’m very familiar with the area, so all of that played into our decision as a family to come back here. It wasn’t about one person, it was about the whole package, so to speak.”
Assuming Jones will be the quarterback this fall — and that may be a generous assumption, given the recent trade rumors plus the presence of Bailey Zappe looming as competition — his relationship with O’Brien could determine the success of the 2023 season. Jones never seemed to mesh with Patricia and Judge, and frustrations boiled over a few times late in the season.
Now Jones gets to work with the famously hottempered O’Brien, whom Tom Brady and Brian Hoyer used to call “teapot” for how often his frustrations would boil over. Get your popcorn ready.
“He brings the juice,” defensive coach Jerod Mayo said. “I always said he was one of the best trash-talking coaches you will ever see on the football field. So I’m excited to have him back.”
O’Brien isn’t ready to say what the offense will look like — whether it will be a continuation of the offense that O’Brien and Josh McDaniels ran from 2005-20, or if major changes are in store. O’Brien ran the Patriots’ offense here, but had to learn new concepts and new ways of teaching the last two years at Alabama.
“We just started yesterday,” O’Brien said. “We really, yesterday, just talked about some of the things we want to get done in the spring goal-wise.
“That’s really what’s important, is getting to know the guys you’re coaching before you even start talking about X’s and O’s.”
O’Brien obviously knows all about last year’s dysfunction. And he seems to know that the best way for the Patriots to succeed is to try to forget everything that happened and never acknowledge it again.
“Every year is a new year, and that’s what this is,” O’Brien said. “Football is a game of emotion at times, that’s what football is. But at the end of the day, this is a new year, this is a new start, and we’re excited about it.”