Don't Trust the Science: The 'Experts' Ranked Josh McDaniels the 8th Best OC in the Business, and This Calls for Senate Hearings
Sometimes a people can only be pushed so far before they have every right to demand answers. No hiding behind your 5th Amendment rights. No privilege. No Presidential pardons. No grants of immunity. If you're going to pass yourself off as an expert, the time comes when you have to be able to stand up for yourself, defend your opinions, and explain the reasoning that went into your conclusions. Because the stakes are simply too high.
I'm talking of course about this survey of the so-called brainy science guys who claim to know what they're talking about, but have still gotten it so terribly, terribly wrong that any layman can see right through their blatantly unscientific findings:
Source - It was Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay and then everyone else for a long time when it came to the NFL’s top offensive play callers. ...
To determine the league’s best offensive play callers and what makes them so difficult to prepare for and play against, I talked to their nemeses: eight defensive play callers and defensive assistant coaches from around the league. Who better to rank and analyze them than the coaches who spend days and nights scheming to stop them? Anonymously, each defensive coach ranked their top 10 play callers in the league. I compiled their rankings to determine the order and added their analysis. ...
8. Josh McDaniels, Patriots
Highest ranking: 1
Lowest ranking: unranked
Last year’s ranking: unranked
McDaniels took a year off after being fired by the Raiders, so he wasn’t ranked last season, but he came back strong and helped second-year quarterback Drake Maye ascend to an MVP level. McDaniels received one first-place vote from a coach who felt his long tenure of success with different quarterbacks and championship pedigree should be considered. McDaniels was also left off four top-10 lists.
“I feel like Josh, and it’s the (Bill) Belichick influence, he calls the game to win the game,” a head coach said. “He doesn’t necessarily call the game to have the best offense. I give him a lot of credit for that.”
Coaches universally agreed with that notion of McDaniels calling games to win them. He understands situational football, and that’s not always the case with some elite play callers.
“He has the patience and the diligence to keep attacking your weaknesses until you get it corrected,” an AFC defensive coordinator said. “And he’s able to do it with whoever he’s had: Tom Brady, Mac Jones and Maye now.”
A defensive coordinator also noted that Shanahan and McVay have relatively easy third-and-long dropback concepts to prepare for, whereas McDaniels’ dropback menu is much more comprehensive and harder to defend. Coaches lauded McDaniels for calling plays to get Maye easy completions with a mix of well-timed shot plays. The Patriots had the highest rate of explosive plays last season (13.6 percent) despite a lack of receiving talent.
I have a question for these Jeopardy! champion-level brainiacs. Actually, a series of questions. Beginning with the obvious.
How can all these things be true of McDaniels, and you still rank him 8th in the league at coaching offense? How can he do all these things, with Brady, Jones, and now Maye in his first full year as a starter, and still barely crack the top 25% of all playcallers? How is that remotely possible given his track record?
McDaniels is entering his 15th season as the Patriots offensive coordinator. In his 14 years, his offenses have led the league in points scored twice, been Top 4 NINE times, including last year when they were No. 2, and Top 8 all but one of his seasons. That would be 2020. When Cam Newton was signed in the middle of summer, an injury to Julian Edelman ended his career, McDaniels' WR1/WR2 duo was Jakobi Meyers and Damiere Byrd (does anyone even remember him?), and he had arguably the worst tight room in the forward pass era (a combined 18 catches for 254 yards and 1 TD). Other than that one dreadful year of pure human misery around the world, McDaniels' presence on your sidelines in a headset and holding a playsheet will get you in the Top 8 in point, guaranteed.
And yet, he's only a Top 8 OC? Make that make sense.
Before you try, before you default to invoking Tom Brady's name, mention Mac Jones' instead. In his rookie season of 2021, the Pats were 6th in the league in points. By then, the team had added Hunter Henry. And Kendrick Bourne was probably a WR3 or 4 on most teams, posing as a competent WR2 behind Meyers. Which is nobody's idea of a stacked depth chart. And sure, you can try to DV me all the OA's you want. But this doesn't require a ton of scrutiny. The offense's job is to outscore the opposition. Which the 2021 team did 10 times, enough to make the playoffs.
The following season, after he took the head coaching job in Las Vegas? They went 8-9, and finished 17th in points with Matt Patricia's hands on the wheel. The season after that? With Bill O'Brien running a variation on the same system as McDaniels? They fell to 31st and everyone lost their jobs.
Maybe the "logic" is because, as that one head coach said, McDaniels is more concerned about winning (what a novel concept) and proper situational football than with dazzling us all with his offensive genius. Which, if it is the case, is an absolutely insane thing to hold against him. If you can coach up your players to bleed the clock, keep the ball in bounds, move the chains, and not turn the ball over when the moment calls for it, why would that be a mark against you? As opposed to chucking it all over the place every chance you get?
This chart helps tell the story. McDaniels was running the McOffense for all these seasons:
… teams (36.1%).
• The Patriots ran 77 times versus a 41.2 average for the other 31 teams.
In that same situation across 1st and 2nd downs, they attempted only three total passes of 20+ air yards (80% fewer than the average of the other 31 teams).
This is what playing keep away looks like: drain the clock and reduce the opponent’s opportunity to answer before halftime.
This strategy helped set up one of the Patriots dynasty’s signature advantages: securing the final possession before halftime and creating opportunities to score on both sides of the break. Just look at the separation on this chart.
We explain the entire strategy in much greater detail in the video below.
Advertisement
He and Belichick, with Brady under center, added an entirely new wrinkle to game management. One which virtually every NFL team employs now in some form or another toward the end of the half. And still he's been a guarantor of being among the top 25% in points (at least) year after bloody year. But still the coaches and coordinators who can't stop him, have him ranked below Liam Coen and Shane Streichen, just to name a couple.
It's a travesty. And the fact the upper chamber of our federal government's bicameral legislature isn't dropping everything to hold hearing and get to the bottom of this is a national disgrace.
Giphy Images.Do better, America. We used to be a proper country.