Josh McDaniels has had a ton of success in his 14 seasons as the New England Patriots’ offensive coordinator.
He’s won three Super Bowl rings with them and nearly won another. He also engineered one of the most prolific offenses in NFL history during the team’s undefeated 2007 regular season.
Much of that success came from having the greatest quarterback in NFL history, Tom Brady, running his offense. However, McDaniels has continued to flourish without Brady, building great offenses around Mac Jones and now Drake Maye.
In fact, this season is arguably McDaniels’ greatest achievement. After three years away from the team, he took a 23-year-old second-year quarterback and designed the league’s top offense in terms of EPA per play.
Even more impressively, McDaniels did it with a limited supporting cast. Maye was the Patriots’ only Pro Bowler on offense this year, and yet he still had an MVP-caliber season.
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Maye is enormously talented and showed lots of growth this year, but McDaniels deserves much of the credit for that. After failing as the Las Vegas Raiders’ head coach, he proved he’s still one of the league’s best offensive coordinators, regardless of the players he has to work with.
Now, it’s up to McDaniels to see if he can keep New England’s high-powered offense humming throughout the playoffs. He has a tough matchup against the Los Angeles Chargers’ rugged defense in the Wild Card Round, which will be a good test for the Patriots and one of the toughest units they’ve faced all year.
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Featured image via Eric Canha/Imagn Images
