All within just a few hours, the Colts hired and lost New England’s offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels in quite the hectic Tuesday – just a mere two days into the Patriots’ offseason. One could say that he pulled a Bill Belichick and resigned as HC of the IC, much to Robert Kraft’s and the entirety of Patriots fans across the globe’s pleasure.
It’s pretty evident that McDaniels was never fully, 100 percent committed to this gig, and for good reason. Indianapolis has the definition of a tanking roster, Andrew Luck still only has one shoulder and their owner is a coke-sniffing egomaniac, just to name a few things. They could have a promising future, but this is the Colts we’re talking about here. In my opinion, if he was going to take a head coaching job this winter, it would have been with Tennessee. Out of all of his options, they had easily the best overall situation, but they quickly took themselves off the board, as we know.
McDaniels was probably at Gillette, going to pack his belongings up and fly out to Indy for his scheduled Wednesday press conference with his new team when Bob Kraft was like, “sit the hell down, we need to talk” and they had a long, drawn out conversation about whether or not Josh should really do this. Kraft is a mastermind at these things, so of course he convinced his guy to stay put.
By the end of that whole meeting or whatever you want to call it, one would guess that Kraft presented McDaniels with an upgraded contract, but this wasn’t about the money.
Indianapolis was going to make Josh one of the highest-paid coaches probably ever. This was more about loyalty than anything else. McDaniels first started out in 2001 and became New England’s offensive coordinator for a couple of years in 2006 before returning to the same position from Denver and St. Louis in a couple of failed head coaching gigs.
I mean, McDaniels is the majority of what Tom Brady has known since his career began in ‘01. Before Josh got promoted to offensive coordinator, he had been the Patriots’ quarterbacks coach from the start. McDaniels came back in 2012, probably right around when Brady really started implementing his whole TB12 lifestyle. McDaniels and Brady notoriously talk more together than they talk to their own wives; it really is like a perfect relationship when you think about it. They thrive off of each other. The team and Brady would have made something work without McDaniels, I’m sure, but both sides are most comfortable with what they have right now and with what they’ve had for so long.
What Kraft told McDaniels, who knows, but I’m sure he reiterated to him that the current situation in New England is lightyears better than the situation out in Indy, and McDaniels feels that way personally, too. There’s obviously much better structure here roster-wise and organization-wise and New England has much better prospects for the long haul, no matter how old Brady is. Something is missing with the Colts compared to the Patriots in McDaniels’ eyes, otherwise he never would have backed out. Who knows if he would have had a successful time over there or not, but what we do know is that Kraft had a feeling Josh’s heart was still going to be in Foxboro no matter what. I’m sure a day-long conversation with a guy like Kraft, and probably Belichick chiming in as well, helped McDaniels realize where he is supposed to be.
Now, do I think Kraft guaranteed McDaniels will be Belichick’s successor when the time does eventually come? No. Bill is coaching in 2018 anyways, and second, guaranteeing someone a job before the time even comes would be extremely un-Patriots-like. What I do think is, is that he will get the first consideration when that time does come. That all comes right back to the loyalty factor. It’s quite possible that Belichick and Kraft told Josh that he’ll be more heavily involved in the roster building aspect, something we’re not sure he previously had. Belichick may very well still see an opportunity to further take McDaniels under his wing.
Even Josh’s agent reportedly told him he was making a huge mistake by doing this, which I guess would be factual to some. It’s not a good look in the eyes of the general public by betraying the trust of an entire franchise like that. Then again, no contract was ever signed, so he had the right to back out, and I think that him doing so sooner rather than later was smart of him. All I personally see is that he stayed true to himself and the team he’s been with since the very beginning. He obviously doesn’t really want to be anywhere else, and for good reason. He fits in so well and thrives in Foxboro alongside the greatest coach and quarterback ever. You can’t beat that; I don’t care how good the money is elsewhere.
If this “hurts his future head coaching candidacy”, then so be it. He’s still going to receive attention from teams across the league despite hoodwinking the Colts. Any person who works for the Patriots at any level is going to get phone calls for as long as they live. Even Charlie Weis still gets calls from both NFL and college teams. People also forget that Belichick did essentially the same thing with the Jets as McDaniels did with Indy, and Bill was hired by the Patriots just weeks later, and, you know, here we are today.
I don’t think the man could have possibly survived with one of his day one guys coaching a rival of his like the Colts. It would have been difficult for New England to have successfully dealt with such egregious coaching turnover, so at the end of the day, McDaniels deciding to stay helps the Patriots both now and down the road, a true win-win situation.
Comments