The New England Patriots are moving forward with the Drake Maye era by trying to grab more of the Bill Belichick pixie dust, with Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniels installed as head coach and offensive coordinator, respectively. These two will try to possibly erase the lows of the Jerod Mayo era.
One of the issues that Mayo and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt ran (no pun intended) into constantly was their hesitancy to use Maye as a runner despite him ranking among the best rushing quarterbacks in the league and the offense around him floundering.
Vrabel is wasting no time distancing himself from the old regime, even taking some fairly obvious shots at the old guard for being unable to maximize Maye's production (which was arguably their main goal in 2024).
Vrabel said that his coaching will "want to do things that maybe they didn’t do with the previous quarterbacks here." It doesn't take a master tea leaf reader to see that Vrabel is clearly taking a sly dig at Van Pelt, and what he perceives to be some wholly inadequate gameplanning around Maye.
Mike Vrabel has subtle dig at past Patriots regime's Drake Maye usage
Van Pelt's offenses never scored more than 25 points in any game and ranked 30th in scoring, though numbers did improve when Maye was inserted as the starting quarterback. Van Pelt's tenure was mixed. The results weren't there, but he did the best he could with perhaps the worst offensive roster in the league.
McDaniels has had success with lead-footed quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Mac Jones in the past, giving him a new added dimension to his play-calling that he hasn't used outside of the whole Tim Tebow monstrosity in Denver. Maye's legs were already a weapon as a rookie, which helped him overcome one of the worst offensive lines in the league.
The challenge for McDaniels, who has not even received a sniff of NFL interest for any position since the Raiders canned him as head coach, is helping the offense around Maye. That terrible offensive line won't get fixed overnight, and Maye still doesn't have any high-end receivers to work with.
Maye and the Patriots should be much improved in 2025 by virtue of a better roster and a more developed No. 10 under center. While Van Pelt may not have done a terrible job, it's clear to all that Vrabel is very confident he will do an infinitely better one right away.