Breer: Josh McDaniels should ‘stay the hell away’ from Patriots

Albert Breer of The MMQB joined Zolak and Bertrand in studio on Thursday to discuss the Raiders firing Josh McDaniels. With a need for new employment, should McDaniels make yet another return to New England? Find out why Breer says that might not be such a great idea:

"He's a really good offensive coach. But as far as just setting up an organization, what other evidence do we have to go on? He wasn't able to make it to the end of year two in either Denver or Vegas. And then you have the Indianapolis thing on top of it. I just I don't see where anybody goes in on him again. Josh, should do what Matt Patricia is doing now. Josh should stay the hell away from here. Josh should stay away.

"Do not come back here because I think Matt Patricia would tell you coming back here was a mistake in 2021. Right. I think Matt [Patricia] would tell you that it has been an incredible experience for him getting to go to Philadelphia, not because the Eagles do it better than the Patriots or anything like that. It's getting to see it done a different way. And I think that that's the primary problem with guys who've come from here. There's a reason why the two most successful guys are probably Bill O'Brien and Romeo Crenel, right?

"As far as head coaches go, Romeo won ten games in Cleveland when no one was winning in Cleveland. Then got fired after the next year. Then O'Brien went to the playoffs. How many times? Three or four times. Why? He won the division three times there. Well, what's the difference between O'Brien and Crenel and everybody else? O'Brien And Crenel didn't grow up under Bill. They were other places. They learned different ways to do it. And I just think with so many of these guys that were here and have come through here, a huge part of the issue is that they've only seen it through one lens."

This has obviously been well-documented, so let's get right to the point: Bill Belichick's coaching tree kinda sucks.

Or maybe it really sucks.

This is obviously relevant again today with the news that the Las Vegas Raiders have fired head coach Josh McDaniels, who second branch from the Belichick coaching tree ended almost as abruptly as the first. After 28 games (and an 11-17 record) with the Denver Broncos in his first stint as a head coach from 2009-10, McDaniels lasted only 25 games in this venture, going 9-16 with the Raiders. He now holds a 20-33 record in at least parts of four seasons as an NFL coach and is logical to assume he won't get another chance, at least not as the Big Kahuna.

McDaniels, of course, is perhaps the most famous of Belichick's assistant coaches, having served as offensive coordinator of the Patriots during two different stints under Belichick. In both instances the Patriots quarterback was Tom Brady, though it should be noted that McDaniels also led a successful Patriots offense in 2008 when an injured Brady was replaced by Matt Cassel. Brady obviously made everybody around him look good - including Belichick - but it was McDaniels' performance with Cassel that ultimately may have landed him the Denver job.

Regardless, McDaniels' stints as a head coach ended in spectacular balls of fire, and most head coaches in the NFL ultimately get just two chances.

Were McDaniels the only from Belichick's tree - and we use the word tree lightly - we could certainly suggest that McDaniels was the problem. But as we've learned over the years, Belichick's coaching tree is far more akin to the one from the Peanuts Christmas tree specials (image to the right), which was hardly a tree at all.

Purely for posterity, beyond McDaniels, here is a look at the offshoots of the Belichick coaching tree, which looks like a list of bad television spin-offs:

Let's make something clear here: as a head coach, Bill O'Brien was hardly a disaster. In seven seasons as head coach of the Houston Texas, O'Brien went 52-48 and made four playoff appearances, during which he went 2-4. Prior to that, he had a successful run at Penn State, where he resurrected what was a program ruined in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. O'Brien will almost certainly be an HFL head coach again, though his current stint as Patriots offensive coordinator may not help.

On this list, Brian Flores holds a unique distinction - he is a former Belichick aide who was fired and probably didn't deserve to be. After a 5-11 rookie season with Miami, Flores went 10-6 and 9-7 in his next two years. He was then fired because of a dispute with the team owner, a controversy that subsequently spilled into the Giants pursuit of Daboll. (You can relive it here.) Now the defensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings, Flores feels like a prime candidate to get another head coaching opportunity at some point. Very few would complain if he ended up in Foxboro in some capacity. Unlike many of Belichick's former assistants, his head coaching career feels like more of a success.

The overall verdict on Daboll still out for now, but his career got off to a promising start last year with a 9-7-1 rookie performance that landed the Giants in the playoffs, where they subsequently upset the Minnesota Vikings. But the Giants this year have since plummeted to 2-6 with one of the worst offenses in the league - the Patriots (Belichick), Giants (Daboll) and Raiders (McDaniel) are the three lowest-scoring teams in football this year - leaving Daboll's overall record at 11-13-1 halfway through his second season. He should get another year - or at least the start of one - but we all know how the NFL works.

Weis looks a little like Bill Parcells in the above photo, and one could certainly argue that he, like Belichick, is actually a disciple of the Parcells tree. That might explain relative success compared to the other members of Belichick's tree, though we include him here anyway.

Though he never became a head coach in the NFL, Weis succeeded at Notre Dame during his first two seasons (when he posted a 19-6 record) en route to an overall record of 35-27. He subsequently went just 6-22 at Kansas and finished with a career mark of 41-49. He wasn't exactly a rousing success, but he wasn't McDaniels, either.

The man who was Bill Parcells' original protégé actually got off to a good start, posting a 10-6 record in his rookie season as head of the New York Jets after a well-publicized and bitter breakup with Bill Belichick. Mangini actually finished with two winning seasons in three years before the Jets fired him following a 9-7 campaign in 2008, after which he was immediately by hired by the Cleveland Browns. He went 10-22 in two seasons at Cleveland and never got another chance, finishing with a 33-47 record for the two franchises that Belichick may despise more than any other.

Like Weis, Crennel really falls under the Parcells umbrella, though he became a head coach after serving as Belichick's defensive coordinator with the Patriots. Widely respected and liked by his peers and former players, Crennel went 10-6 in his third season as head coach with the Cleveland Browns but was fired after a 4-12 performance the very next season. He subsequently went 8-23 in stints with Kansas City and Houston, those two of those seasons were interim positions in which he took over for a coach who had been fired - one of whom was O'Brien.

Bill Belichick has always believed in complementary football, so let the record show that Judge came from special teams, perfect augmenting the offensive (McDaniels, O'Brien, Weis) and defensive (Crennel, Mangini, Patricia) coaches who served under him. After Belichick recommended him to the New York Giants, Judge seemingly had the rebuilding Giants on the right track with a decent 5-7 record in his first season   before things went complete downhill. New York went 5-16 over Judge's final 21 games - including a 4-13 record in the 2021 season - before the Giants fired him. He, too, returned to New England, where he remains on Belichick's staff.

Like many of his predecessors, Patricia seemingly had a fatal flaw: he tried to be Belichick. Lions players seemingly rebelled against him right from the start, going 6-10 just one year after a 9-7 season under the deposed Jim Caldwell. Detroit then went a combined 7-19-1 over the next two years before he was fired during the 2020 season, finishing with a career mark of 13-29-1. Unlike Mangini, Patricia promptly was rehired in New England.