The Patriots are not strangers to ridiculous scrutiny and even bogus accusations, as we saw throughout their two decades of domination over the rest of the NFL, so it's not exactly shocking to see they continue to be a topic of conversation for those who most want to see their downfall.
That includes people in the media, like FS1's Nick Wright, who has been wrong about the Patriots so many times it's too much to count at this point. As the resident Chiefs fan, his hatred for New England is incredibly biased, and yet that doesn't stop him from adding more garbage takes to the sports atmosphere.
His latest comes at the expense of offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels because, for some reason, Wright doesn't believe he deserves much credit for the Patriots' or Tom Brady's success during the dynasty,
In fact, he goes as far as exclaiming that McDaniels wouldn't even be considered a top-5 playcaller in the NFL today, and he's not so sure he's the right guy to help Drake Maye get to the next level.
You read that correctly.
Nick Wright's latest comments on Josh McDaniels might be the worst take in recent memory
As if the description of what was said wasn't bad enough, reading it in text might be even worse.
It's just the latest wild take from Wright, who has long been incapable of giving the Patriots their flowers for their impressive history, so it's unsurprising that he's now downplaying what they're capable of in 2026 and beyond.
"Josh was there as the offensive coordinator [when the Patriots] lost the Super Bowl to the [New York] Giants, and he had to really piece it together with Tom Brady and Randy Moss...I think he's an excellent offensive coordinator. He also then came back after not working as a head coach and got 12 years into his career, that mind of Tom Brady, and then Brady reached heights he hadn't reached before.
I'm not taking anything away from what I think is fair credit to Josh McDaniels, but this idea that he has this magical pixie dust, that he can just sprinkle on Drake Maye on this stuff—I don't think if we are ranking offensive minds in the league, he's not one of my top five. Now, it's because almost all of the other guys who are ahead of him are head coaches. ...There's a lot of McDaniels was there with Brady, therefore he's there with Maye that I just don't fully buy."
The first mistake Wright made with this take is comparing Brady and McDaniels to Maye and McDaniels, because how can an upcoming third-year quarterback be compared to the greatest of all time?
Secondly, although he wasn't the play-caller at the start of the dynasty years, McDaniels was around for their final three Super Bowl wins, which certainly means something.
On top of that, he helped make the team somewhat decent in the season immediately after Brady left for the Bucs, helping Cam Newton break multiple franchise records in his lone season as the Patriots' starter. He then helped make Mac Jones a Pro Bowler as a rookie before leaving to become the Raiders' head coach.
In the years he was out in Las Vegas, the Patriots' offense fell apart under multiple offensive coordinators, including Matt Patricia, Bill O'Brien, and Alex Van Pelt.
They looked like a legitimate and capable group during the 2025 season, and most of that was due to McDaniels' expertise. So Wright's disregard for what he can do as an offensive coordinator seems clouded by his failure as a head coach, and those are not the same thing.
Regardless, there's no reason to believe that Wright will be proven correct about McDaniels any time soon. He's on a path to help Maye become the best quarterback that he can be, as we saw last year, and there's too much evidence that suggests that's more inevitable than what he's suggesting.
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