Since the departure of Josh McDaniels this offseason, the commentary surrounding the Patriots has been solely focused on their offense.
What will the offense look like?
How is McDaniels’ absence going to impact Mac Jones in only his second year?
Who is going to be the offensive coordinator?
Many of the questions remain unanswered thus far, and the struggles the offense has been seen to have in training camp have furthered the discussion and worry.
Julian Edelman recently announced a new podcast, Games with Names, and while promoting it this week on The Rich Eisen Show, he spoke a lot about his former team and his reaction to the offensive struggles.
“I think it’s a learning process for everyone, the whole team,” Edelman said. “It’s going to be interesting, it’s very interesting because I watched that game, I watched the cut-ups, and a lot of the concepts are nothing I’ve really seen. A lot of them are very vanilla, which is very procedural with preseason, they want to throw vanilla stuff out there and see mano-y-mano can the kid get open, can he make the catch. Let’s not try to scheme anything up. Those are things I’ve never seen, and it’s going to be interesting.”
Edelman would later discuss the impact of McDaniels’ heading out west to coach the Raiders on the team as a whole, but specifically on Jones in his development.
“Josh McDaniels, he’s a really good play-caller, and we saw Josh McDaniels and Mac Jones work last year together and he had some great results. Now, you’re going to see your biggest leap usually from your young quarterback Year 1 to Year 2 because he’s going to know the system, know the environment, the schedule, everything usually comes easier the second year. But he’s going in with a completely different mindset with (this setup), and now he’s got to learn how they’re going to call plays, they’ve got to learn which plays he likes, so it’s going to be interesting.”
Hearing from a former player gives far more insight into the situation than those in the media, most of which are just trying to have the hottest new take. The concerns regarding the success of the newly implemented offense are not displaced, but the doom and gloom that has come from only seeing the team in training camp is.
Edelman would go on to say that if any head coach can deal with the any speedbumps that arise from the new playbook it’s Belichick. “Bill Belichick is a pretty smart guy.” he said.