Patriots’ Massive Coaching Shakeup Should Create Winning Culture

The Patriots will soon embark on a transformative offseason, which includes major organizational, staffing and roster changes. NESN gave me a shot at predicting what those changes will look like, helping turn things around for New England entering 2025. Welcome to the latest installment of our Patriots Manifesto, where we’ll dive deeper into the organizational aspect of things.

Part 1: The Patriots Manifesto

---

New England made our job easy by turning over a large part of the organization relatively quickly, but Mike Vrabel (head coach), Josh McDaniels (offensive coordinator) and Terrell Williams (defensive coordinator) aren’t the only new faces you can expect to see around One Patriot Place in 2025.

The Patriots recently announced their full coaching staff, which includes a wealth of names you already knew before the announcement. Thomas Brown, Doug Marrone, Todd Downing and Ben McAdoo have been around the block, with three of the four having head coaching experience. Vrabel retained very few members of the staff from last season, focusing on experience, familiarity and upside while building things out — a far cry from last offseason’s approach.

Jerod Mayo clearly wasn’t ready to be a head coach, with his elevation into the role essentially being doomed from the start. Alex Van Pelt is respected by many for his ability to develop talent, but stepped into a play-calling role for the first time and saw his early struggles dominate public perception of him. DeMarcus Covington went from being a beloved young position coach to a much-maligned defensive coordinator. The Patriots learned from setting those guys up for failure, and in hiring this staff around Vrabel, learned from their mistakes.

John Streicher, Tony Dews, Terrell Williams, Ryan Cowden, Zak Kuhr, Todd Downing, Clinton McMillan, Jason Houghtailing and Scott Booker all previously worked on those staffs with the Tennessee Titans, but this unit isn’t a complete retread.

Riley Larkin, Chuckie Keeton, Vinny DePalma, Kevin Richardson and Milton Patterson might not feel like significant pieces to the puzzle just yet, but they could eventually rise to larger roles. The Patriots have had tons of success developing general assistants into position coaches and eventually coordinators — so they’re getting back to having them as part of the overall staff after a year of more specialized roles. McDaniels will obviously have a huge hand in how the offense is approached, bringing a fresh perspective to that familiar unit we mentioned earlier.

Vrabel is probably set with his decisions, but we didn’t start this thing to have people do the work for us, so we decided to add one extra name — for funsies.

Kris Richard was successful as defensive coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks from 2015 to 2017 but found himself in lesser roles for the Jacksonville Jaguars, New Orleans Saints and Dallas Cowboys over the last several seasons after leaving over personnel decisions. The Patriots should look for him to take on a defensive passing game coordinator role under Williams, allowing Richard to have some real input for the first time in a while and provide play-calling experience on the defensive side of the ball. It’s essentially the defensive version of what they did with Brown, so don’t give us too much credit.

We don’t love everything they did, though.

The Patriots have this odd tendency to hire first-time wide receiver coaches, with the last five men to hold the job all coming in with zero experience at the professional level. Tyler Hughes had never been anything more than a general offensive assistant at the professional level before his hiring in 2024. Ross Douglas literally coached on the other side of the ball for two years before being elevated into the role in 2023. Troy Brown played the position, but never coached it before 2022. Mick Lombardi had never coached any position before 2020. Joe Judge was a career special teams coach before having that job dumped on his plate in 2019.

Chad O’Shea was the last wide receivers coach, by trade, to be hired for the role, which he went on to hold for a freakin’ decade. Downing has plenty of experience in the NFL, but having another guy learn on the job when it comes to the most fragile egos in the sport might not be great business. Wes Welker was right there!

New England did the majority of the work, but our minor tweak has our projection looking like this heading into 2025:

COACHING STAFF
Mike Vrabel (Head Coach)
Josh McDaniels (Offensive Coordinator)
Terrell Williams (Defensive Coordinator)
Jeremy Springer (Special Teams Coordinator)
Thomas Brown (Tight Ends/Off. Passing Game Coordinator)
Ashton Grant (Quarterbacks)
Tony Dews (Running Backs)
Todd Downing (Wide Receivers)
Doug Marrone (Offensive Line)
Jason Houghtaling (Assistant Offensive Line)
Robert Kugler (Assistant Offensive Line)
Riley Larkin (Offensive Assistant)
Chuckie Keeton (Offensive Assistant)
Kris Richard (Def. Passing Game Coordinator)
Clint McMillan (Defensive Line)
Zak Kuhr (Inside Linebackers)
Mike Smith (Outside Linebackers)
Justin Hamilton (Cornerbacks)
Scott Booker (Safeties)
Ben McAdoo (Senior Defensive Assistant)
Vinny DePalma (Defensive Assistant)
Kevin Richardson (Defensive Assistant)
Milton Patterson (Defensive Assistant)
Tom Quinn (Assistant Special Teams)
Frank Piraino (Director of Sports Performance)
Deron Mayo (Strength and Conditioning)
Brian McDonough (Assistant Strength and Conditioning)

FRONT OFFICE
Robert Kraft (Chairman/CEO)
Jonathan Kraft (President)
Eliot Wolf (EVP of Player Personnel)
Ryan Cowden (VP of Player Personnel)
John Streicher (VP of Football Operations and Strategy)
Matt Groh (Director of Player Personnel)
Alonzo Highsmith (Senior Personnel Executive)
Patrick Stewart (Director of Player Personnel)
Camren Williams (Director of College Scouting)