Why Blaming Josh McDaniels Misses the Point

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I’m going to stand up for New England Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels.

The Canton native took a lot of criticism from all the talking heads on Sunday night during his team’s 29-13 blowout loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl 60 and then again throughout Monday.

“I wish he would’ve called some screen passes.”

“I wish he would’ve called some draw plays.”

“I wish this, and I wish that,” and so on and so forth. Blah blah, blah, blah.

The truth of the matter is that McDaniels was between a rock and a hard place. With the way his offensive line was getting destroyed — not just beaten, mind you, but outright whupped, manhandled — on almost every single play, there was really not much he could’ve done.

A couple screen passes really worked early, but then the Seahawks bunched up into the box and stopped that. The draw plays didn’t work, either, because they got blown up by the oncoming rush before they could ever get started.

Former Browns legendary quarterback Bernie Kosar always used to say that he wanted to throw deep down field at least one time a quarter to keep the defense from creeping up near the line of scrimmage. It forced those safeties to get back out of the box.

But there was no way that quarterback Drake Maye could do that because there was not enough time to stand back in the pocket and throw deep down the field. By the time those plays would’ve had any chance of opening up, he would’ve been flat on his back

There is nothing wrong with Josh McDaniels, probably the best offensive coordinator in the history of the NFL, that a bunch of better offensive linemen would not cure.

Steve King