Josh McDaniels' Game Plan Sunday Proves Once Again Why He's the Perfect Man For the Patriots OC Job

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The culture of New England sports fandom being what it is in the Year of Our Lord 2026, where we metaphorically build statues to our icons just so we can abstractly tear them down, a headline like the one you just clicked on (thanks for helping pay the bills at Stately Thornton Manor. Buy all our sponsors products) can get you ostracized. 

Giphy Images.

Banished from polite society. Rejected by friends and neighbors. Denied certain public benefits. Tainted with a mark of shame. And given cooties whose stink you may never be able to scrub out of your skin with an ocean-sized tub and a mountain range of suds. 

But I don't care. I'm saying it anyway. That might be overly long and grammatically lousy, but I stand by every word. 

While it wasn't at all a popular opinion in September when the Pats couldn't get out of their own way and averaging 0.8 points per possession, Sunday was Josh McDaniels' redemption. This is why I wanted Mike Vrabel to hire him. This is why I haven't doubted since that he's the best suited man currently walking the Earth to manage this offense, and be the Dumbledore who mentors Drake Maye into continued greatness in this crucial time in his development. 

As an aside, let me say this point shouldn't even have to be made. It's self-evident. This is his third tour of duty as Patriots OC. He's now in his 15th year on the job. And in the 14 years prior, his offense only finished out of the Top 8 in points, once. That was in 2020, which was a football season in asterisk form. And before you go ahead and reflexively "But Tom Brady" me, tell me again how he finished 8th with Matt Cassell and fricking 6th with rookie Mac Jones and Jakobi Meyers as his WR1. 

But the past is only prologue right now. What we're here to discuss is his - and Maye's - performances on Sunday in Orchard Park. 

For three weeks, the quarterback looked broken. Unsure of himself. With bad mechanics. Worse decision making. Utterly lacking in situational awareness. And drives ending with no points when points were there for the taking. The scheme looked predictable. There was no imagination to it. Nothing in sync. It was the Enterprise in every Star Trek: TOS episode where the situation's dire, the helm isn't responding, Kirk is demanding answers and Scotty has to yell into the comm, "I can't change the laws of physics, Captain!" Before he proceeds to do exactly that. Because he's fooking best engineer in Starfleet.  

So let's look at some of the ways McDaniels changed physics to get this Starship running at warp speed and saved our little corner of the cosmos.

He Used His Past "Predictable" Tendencies Against the Bills

Here's a staple of the McOffense going back over a decade, affectionately referred to as the Tunnel Screen. The field side receiver breaks back to the quarterback to make the catch, and ideally picks up a bunch of yards behind a wall of blockers:

And teams began teeing off on it. If memory serves, both Jacksonville and Pittsburgh blew it up for a loss or no gain. (Don't make me dig up the plays. I'm going on what I remember.) They should have. There are hours of tape on it. So at Buffalo, in a high leverage situation in the opening drive, McDaniels gave the Bills that look. What I originally thought was Maye pulling the ball back when he saw Pop Douglas was about to be wiped out behind the line of scrimmage, I'm now convinced was McDaniels getting Buffalo to commit on the throw so Maye could go backside to Romeo Doubs running a skinny post for the score:

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As for Maye, you simply cannot look more confident and poised than he did on that one. He saw Doubs had inside leverage and had the ball heading on target before he got into his break. Speaking of confidence, I'm going to confidently add, "Just the way they drew it up." Because I'm certain that was the plan when the call came in from the sidelines.

His Red Zone Package Was the Difference in the Game

As Dan Orlovsky pointed out, the two 2-point conversions, a successful one for New England and a failed one by Buffalo decided what was ultimately a 3-point game. Scrub to the 2:00 mark to see a breakdown of the Patriots conversion:

A 2x2 concept with Doubs and Kyle Williams running corner routes, Hunter Henry at the pylon, and Douglas scraping along the back line. All of which left Rhamondre Stevenson iso'd on Terrel Bernard. Just the two of them, all alone between the hashes. The problem for Bernard was that he also had Maye to worry about, with no other defender in the area. He hesitated just long enough for Stevenson to shake free and that's all Maye needed for the easy pitch and catch.

His Attention to Detail

Forget for a second the sand it takes to throw for a 1st down on 3rd & 10 and a game on the line. If Maye throws an incompletion, the Bills save a time out for a final drive. If he takes a sack, you're all but guaranteed to give Allen short field. McDaniels and Vrabel not only put their full faith and trust in Maye to make a game-ending throw, there was this subtle but crucial little detail I missed in the 12 times I watched the TV/sideline angle:

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I honestly thought Bishop stumbled. But it was Chism bumping him just enough to give Henry a half a step, and seal the deal. Ballgame. 

His Aggressiveness and Playcalling on 4th Down Has Been Paying Off

The Pats are not a Tush Push team. For whatever reason, they haven't had the ability to QB sneak consistently since Tom Brady left us. But McDaniels finds ways to get to the line to gain (a 4th & 3 on the first possession, which we're about to get to)  as well as any OC in the game. 

In Buffalo, He Turned Every Tendency on Its Head and Did the Opposite

Patriots.com - [T]he Patriots entered the week near the bottom of the league in many of the "easy buttons" offenses use to stress defenses. The Pats were 29th in play-action rate (20.7%) and last in motion rate (54%). Without the threat of play-action and motion, the Patriots were 31st in EPA from under center (-0.35) through three games, putting much of the offense on Maye's shoulders in a static passing game. …

Here's hoping I don't get in trouble with the team for screen-shotting this excellent chart Evan Lazar came up with. But it's called Show & Tell, and we're just doing a lot of talking:

He continues:

So, what did McDaniels do on Sunday vs. the Bills? You guessed it: a shotgun-heavy opening script and more window dressing, producing a season-high 51.3% success rate from under center. …

Along with having Maye in the shotgun on 9-of-12 plays on the Patriots opening drive, including the 14-yard TD pass to WR Romeo Doubs, McDaniels upped the pre-snap motion rate to 75.3% in Week 4, their highest rate in a single game since Week 15, 2023. The Pats were successful on 46.4% of their plays with motion (good!) and they increased their play-action usage to 35.7%, with Maye going 7-of-13 for 85 yards and a touchdown off play-action concepts.

This is what the great ones do. Self-scout. Identify tendencies defenses are keying on. And like military that's had their code broken, send false information that dictates what the enemy is going to do. 

He Knew What to Expect From the Bills and Had Plans for All of It. As Did Maye.

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Regarding that 4th & 3 I mentioned earlier:

Source -  In retrospect, the first sign Maye was going to be more than OK Sunday came before his first touchdown.

Facing fourth-and-3 in Bills’ territory on his opening drive, Maye took the snap and instantly recognized Buffalo had disguised a Cover 2 pressure that generated a free runner at him, but also let Romeo Doubs loose down the left sideline. Maye didn’t hesitate, ripping one of his favorite throws, a “hole shot” in quarterback parlance, and connected with a receiver with whom he’s thus far struggled to develop chemistry. Everything that had been missing from Maye’s tape this season was packed into that play: trusting his eyes, taking what the defense gave him and delivering an accurate ball on time while under pressure.

Regarding that "hole shot," Maye was 3-for-3 for 47 yards and a 118.8 passer rating when throwing outside the hashes between 10 and 20 yards. And on the shorter outside throws, was 5-for-6 for 39 yards. He simply picked the edges of the Bills defense apart. 

We continue:

Underneath all the motion and play fakes and run-game diversity was a steadfast commitment to pounding the ball against a mediocre Bills front with big bodies. McDaniels deployed a sixth offensive lineman on 26% of the Patriots' snaps. He hoped, as he did in Jacksonville, to take pressure off Maye by establishing run-pass balance. Maye mostly bailed himself out, but McDaniels was mildly successful on the ground, where he changed up his personnel and play-calling with sprinkles of outside zone, power, counter and trap into more heavy serving of duo and inside zone plays.

In short, the Bills came in expecting to be zigged, and he zagged. In doing so, not only did the Patriots win a division game on the road no one was expecting, they put things on tape that were not there until now. So everyone, starting with Las Vegas Sunday, now has to account for all the wrinkles he just threw at Buffalo. With the hardest part of their schedule behind them, and easier defenses lying ahead. 

All the Josh McDaniels haters take note. This is what I voted for.