What will the Patriots offense look like with a new coordinator and quarterback? (2024)

Editor’s note: This is the fifth piece in our five-part series looking at the biggest questions facing the New England Patriotsbefore training camp. Previously, we exploredwho will be the starting left tackle,how the Patriots’ receivers stack up, how long they should wait before making Drake Maye the starting quarterback and whether they can have a top defense without Bill Belichick.

Jerod Mayo’s search for an offensive coordinator took some time. He talked to a dozen candidates. Several turned down the gig.

He ultimately landed on Alex Van Pelt after being sold by the veteran coach’s plans for a scheme change for the Patriots and how he’d handle a rookie quarterback.

We’ve talked plenty (and will continue to) about Drake Maye’s development. But what will the offense look like functionally (regardless of the quarterback)?

Van Pelt said much of the team’s playbook and scheme will come from what he helped oversee as head coach Kevin Stefanski’s (non-play-calling) offensive coordinator the last four years with the Cleveland Browns.

Stefanski runs an offense that borrows from a few schemes but is rooted in the Mike Shanahan-style offense. Stefanski learned a lot from Gary Kubiak (whose mentor was Shanahan) during their time together in Minnesota.

After covering Stefanski’s offense in Minnesota and diving through the numbers (all stats below come from TruMedia), I found four major traits Patriots fans should know about the offense that’s being implemented.

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1. The Patriots will run — a lot

Stefanski is one of the most analytically minded head coaches in the NFL. But the one area where his offense deviates from the analytics is how much it relies on rushing the ball. Analytics points to passes typically being more efficient plays.

But in the four years Van Pelt was the Browns’ offensive coordinator, his unit ranked 29th in the NFL in early-down passing percentage, passing it just 51 percent of the time on first and second downs.

Instead, the offense leans on a zone rushing attack where the offensive line moves as one unit and the running back finds a natural cut-back spot when linebackers overpursue. The way Stefanski and Van Pelt have taught it, the running game has been very successful. The Browns ranked second in the league in rushes over 10 yards in the four years Van Pelt was with the team.

2. Under-center play-action

Here’s where Stefanski really leans into analytics. On several occasions, he has cited studies that show — contrary to how coaches often talk — you don’t have to establish the run for play-action plays to be effective.

That’s why his offense leans on lots of play-action concepts even on early downs and early in the game. Last season, the Browns ranked fifth in early-down play-action usage, and they ranked fifth in under-center play-action over Van Pelt’s four years as offensive coordinator.

Expect Van Pelt to talk a lot about “marrying the run and pass,” which essentially means he wants the team’s play-action passes to look similar to its running plays. The offense often asks the quarterback to roll out on a bootleg after the play-action fake and establish a new pocket.

That’s where quarterback footwork is so important. When Stefanski was an offensive coordinator, he often stayed after practice to put his quarterback through drills focused on the footwork of a play — even without anyone else from the offense present. So don’t be surprised if Maye is doing that in August.

Two other notes on Maye. First, he’s adept at bootlegs, and that was one area in which scouts praised him, highlighting his athleticism and ability to throw on the run. That’s a good fit for this scheme. On the other hand, the Stefanski offense likes to keep the quarterback under center (the Browns ranked fourth in under-center usage the last four years), which is an area Maye will have to work on after primarily operating from the shotgun in college.

3. Heavy formations

This offense likes to make the opposing defense uncomfortable by passing out of formations that should favor a run and running out of formations that should favor a pass. Stefanski and Van Pelt are comfortable running out of a three-wide receiver set and passing out of a formation with only one wide receiver.

In general, this offense doesn’t get into spread concepts with several wide receivers very often. The most popular personnel grouping in the NFL is known as 11 personnel, with one running back, one tight end and three wide receivers on the field. But the Browns ranked 25th in the usage of that grouping with Van Pelt as the OC. On the other hand, they used 13 personnel (one running back, three tight ends and one wide receiver) more than any other team.

4. Deep passes

The offense Stefanski and Van Pelt run doesn’t just use play-action for the sake of using it. They like to take deep shots off it.

One of the core concepts is a play that’s designed to look like a run, but the quarterback runs a play fake and bootlegs outside to re-establish a pocket, then looks for one of the two receivers running deep crossing routes. Here’s an example of it from a play Stefanski called with Kirk Cousins finding Adam Thielen.

The numbers reflect the offense’s goal of finding deep shots in the passing game even if they don’t throw the ball that often (ranking 29th in the league the last four years in dropback percentage). Still, in that time, the Stefanski/Van Pelt-led offense ranked seventh in the percentage of passes thrown beyond the first-down marker, fifth in air yards per attempt and second in the number of passing attempts beyond 15 yards.

That’s in part why the Patriots liked Maye so much as a fit for this scheme. They think he’s athletic enough to roll out of the pocket on the designed boots this offense likes and has the arm strength to hit the deep passes that the scheme so often relies on.

(Photo of Alex Van Pelt and Jacoby Brissett: Matt Stone / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald via Getty Images)

Chad Graff is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the New England Patriots since 2022 after five years on the Minnesota Vikings beat. Graff joined The Athletic in January 2018 after covering a bit of everything for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He won the Pro Football Writers of America’s 2022 Bob Oates Award for beat writing. He's a New Hampshire native and an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of New Hampshire. Follow Chad on Twitter @ChadGraff