Ian Rapoport shares insight on Patriots’ hiring of Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator

Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network joined Felger and Mazz on Wednesday at Radio Row, and discussed the New England Patriots' re-hiring of Josh McDaniels as offensive coordinator.

Felger: Mike Vrabel and Josh McDaniels, I feel it's a little bit of an arranged marriage. Mike Vrabel had West Coast, Shanahan and McVay guys in Tennessee. When you look at the assistants that they've hired in New England, a lot of them are Shanahan and McVay guys. Yet the offensive coordinator is Josh McDaniels, who's obviously closely aligned with the Krafts, also still getting paid by the Raiders.

So, maybe comes in at a nice number for New England. So I sort of look at that and go, “Kind of an arranged marriage here."

Ian Rapoport: I mean, maybe an arranged marriage? Yes, but I do believe Mike Vrabel had autonomy over the staff and so I imagine if he did not want Josh McDaniels that he would not happen, right? But you're right, it's a little bit of a mix of systems.

I'm OK with that because Josh has obviously bounced around. When he was in Las Vegas there were some different viewpoints there, some different guys on the staff, maybe kind of help him “modernize” I guess you would say. Guys like Scott Turner, for instance, kind of come from that tree.

Here's the most important thing to me. If you were a head coach, and you were like, "I want to hire the most successful and best offensive coordinator I could find," Josh McDaniels would be on the list. He'd be very, very high on the list and I don't think he was going, honestly, anywhere except New England. Like people kept asking me, “Oh you know, I hear rumors of maybe he's going to join Bill in North Carolina."

I don't think he was moving out of New England. So it was either this or bust and I think it's a good hire. 

Ian Rapoport: You know, if you are Drake Maye, and I know Drake Maye was for sure rooting for this, you’re Drake Maye, you’d like to be a very good quarterback, having the guy who helped Tom Brady become a very, very good quarterback, you could do worse. 

Mazz: So when you say Drake Maye was rooting for this, I would love to hear more. The rooting for it relative to what?

Ian Rapoport: To anything else. 

Mazz: Including what he had? 

Ian Rapoport: Yeah. I mean, I think given the situation last year with the offensive line, with the lack of weapons, all around and the team was ... the team was bad. And I would say it was even actually worse than I probably realized at the time. In like October or November me, just as like an outside observer, like the last couple games happened, and I was like "Wow." I'm like, "They're bad. They're just bad. Just bad." 

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