Tension? What tension?
After handing the Cincinnati Bengals their first loss of the season in a 43-17 beatdown, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady refuted the report that surfaced over the weekend which said turmoil existed between himself and the coaching staff.
Brady’s words and his performance essentially put the kibosh on the report, but if there were any lingering doubts about the veracity of those claims, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels set the record straight on Tuesday during a conference call. Although McDaniels said he hadn’t been keeping up with the report about the conflict between the coaches and Brady, he said his relationship with the quarterback is strong and the two have fun working together.
“I’m not necessarily aware of exactly what you’re referring to. Whatever reports are, they are what they are,” McDaniels said. “I don’t know, you’d have to ask the people that reported that. I know that it’s exciting for us to come to work together. We look forward to working together with the staff and the players and trying to put together the best plan that we can, and we have a lot of fun doing that.”
The bond between the two of them goes back to when they first began working together during the signal-caller’s rookie season in 2001, when McDaniels was a personnel assistant on New England’s coaching staff. When McDaniels became the quarterbacks coach in 2004, the two became even closer with their relationship extending beyond the football field, and the same holds true years later.
“Well, we’ve experienced a lot of different things together. I started on defense and didn’t have certainly the same type of relationship with him when I was on the other side of the ball. But when I came over to the offense and started working with him in 2004, obviously I spend more time with him than I do anybody, honestly, for these six or seven months, so it’s hard not to become very close with those kinds of people that you work with and interact with on a daily basis.
“We’ve both become parents and husbands and all the rest of it as we’ve grown up. I think just things, naturally you get closer as you go, and you experience more and know more about the other person – the things that they do and like and a lot of things that don’t even involve football as well. I’ve been fortunate to have this experience in my life, and it’s certainly something that I look forward to each day.”
Photo via Winslow Townson/USA TODAY Sports Images
