FOXBORO -- Earlier this offseason, Bill O'Brien explained that everyone on the Patriots offense would be working with a "clean slate." But after such an odd 2022 on that side of the ball in New England, it's hard not to compare and contrast what happened last year and what's happening now on the fields behind Gillette Stadium.
The latest example of this phenomenon came on Monday when Mac Jones described one of the reasons why Patriots players are believing in O'Brien's offensive system.
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"We've come out here and really bought into the system," Jones said following the team's first of three mandatory minicamp practices this week. "That'll really show in training camp and preseason. It's sometimes hard to show it out here, but I've been really pleased with the tight ends, running backs and all the receivers. The young guys, the old guys... We have a good group."
When asked how he has seen the buy-in manifest itself, Jones went a little deeper. In the process, he touched on one of the primary differences between last year's offense and this year's.
"There is," he said, "good juice around the building... There's things that pop up in practice. Issues. And we just try to fix them on the run, and we have tools to do that. It's all about your toolbox. That's what's so great about the system. You use it as a quarterback. The most is put on you, but that's a good thing because you have tools to fix it. That's been really good to kind of work some of those things."
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That may seem like run-of-the-mill commentary that would apply to any offense in the NFL. But last year around this time, the Patriots were simply running plays as they were called. Their "toolbox" was limited. That was by design as the team implemented a new offense that players and coaches needed to get acclimated to. But as training camp wore on, Jones still wasn't given much in the way of decision-making power at the line of scrimmage.
Get the play call. Line up. Run the play. Happened in practice. Happened in preseason games.
Even if a defensive look was well-suited to stop whatever was about to be run by the Patriots offense, they ran it anyway. The goal was for less thinking, which would encourage the offense to play more quickly.
But the results were often not pretty. And even the play-caller at the time, Matt Patricia, acknowledged that the Patriots didn't give themselves much of a chance at times by limiting their pre-snap adjustments.
"Right now, we'll run (running plays) into looks that maybe aren't great,” he said, “so that we can get the runs in and make sure we are getting enough reps at everything before the reps kind of get limited as we go forward."
By comparison, New England's offensive coordinator in 2021, Josh McDaniels, encouraged Jones to make changes at the line throughout the course of his first season in the system.
Run a play into a bad look? What was the point? Jones, whose football acumen was lauded by McDaniels throughout his rookie season, could handle it. Thus McDaniels trusted him to handle it.
While it's early, based on Jones' commentary Monday, it appears as though the hiring of O'Brien has led to the Patriots once again adopting that give-the-quarterback-the-reins-at-the-line approach.
During one rep at Monday's practice, Jones appeared to see an all-out blitz coming just before the snap. He made a hand signal to his pass-catchers prior to getting the snap and eventually found Kendrick Bourne over the middle for a catch-and-run touchdown.
If Jones has the freedom to check and adjust plays at the line -- the "tools" he didn't have at this point last season -- that might be one reason why players appear to be so enamored with the O'Brien scheme.
