The difference between last year's training camp and this year's for the New England Patriots offense has been night and day, and it comes down to one major change on that side of the ball.
After a dysfunctional season with Matt Patricia and Joe Judge at the helm, the Patriots brought back Bill O'Brien as their offensive coordinator. We're only about one week into camp, but O'Brien already has made his presence felt.
On the latest episode of Tom E. Curran's Patriots Talk Podcast, Phil Perry shared the areas in which O'Brien's influence has been seen most so far this summer.
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"It's everywhere. I think it's in the cleanliness with which they've played," Perry pointed out. "Bill Murray and Kody Russey both had false start penalties in pretty quick succession, I want to say three or three or four days ago. Outside of that, you almost never see an offensive penalty. You very rarely see any sort of discombobulation at the line of scrimmage. So I think that's Bill O'Brien.
"I also think the variety in what we've seen from them offensively is Bill O'Brien. We've seen them run wide zone, we've seen them run power and counter and wham plays and these downhill gap scheme plays. We've seen like five or six different variations of screens and probably more than that. We've seen, I think, the foundation being laid for RPOs
"We've seen them go empty, we've seen them play with two tight ends, we've seen them play with three tight ends at times. So they have this multitude of schematic buckets that they're already dipping into, whereas again, I felt like last year they were just so limited in the number of things they wanted to do that it set them up to be very simple throughout the course of last season."
Also in this episode:
- Making sense of Jack Jones’ departure.
- No signs of a QB competition.
- Offensive improvements evident in past two practices.
- WR stock up, stock down.
