Patriots Working Hard To Acclimate New Players To Challenging System

The New England Patriots have had to bring in some new faces in recent weeks, but they’re not alone in having to acclimate players to their system at crunch time.

With injuries cropping up nearly every week for the Patriots, the team has had to make some additions to fill out its dwindling offense, adding pieces like wide receiver Leonard Hankerson, running back Joey Iosefa and (reportedly) running back Steven Jackson. But dealing with guys who are new to a complicated system isn’t just a Patriots problem.

“I think that happens to every team,” offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels said in a conference call Monday. “You never go through the whole season without some changes and some things you have to adjust.

“I think that in Joey Iosefa’s case, he wasn’t here at the beginning and he has kind of had to scramble to get some things learned in a hurry, and we’ve tried to use a few extra periods in practice to help some of those younger players or newer players come along and try to get some extra repetitions in our system, so I think that is the challenge that every staff faces.”

And head coach Bill Belichick is up for the challenge because as the Patriots’ motto goes, he’s just doing his job.

“Each of us is different as individuals and we learn at different rates, and some things come easier to some people and some things come harder to some people,” Belichick said Monday, via conference call. “… When you teach somebody, trying to teach anybody, there are different methods you can use.

“You can read it, you can hear it, you can write it down, you can show pictures, you can stand and have kind of a spatial instruction as opposed to a picture or a diagram, and again, some players, some people learn in one way, some people learn in another way. … I think that’s just fundamental teaching, which is really what coaching is — it’s teaching.”

Thumbnail photo via Kevin Jairaj/USA TODAY Sports Images