What's Up With The Conservative Playcalling and Is McDaniels Solely To Blame?

Anyone who knows me, knows I have been a  critic of Josh McDaniels since 2018. I dubbed him McVanilla. He has peaked as a coordinator and should not advance for the Patriots. This season the team has run an efficient playcalling that requires the team to be perfect. Is it conservative, maybe but he doesn't have to be aggressive if the playcalling is working. That's the problem but so is execution.

McDaniels this season has taken some heat for times when the team has run the ball instead of passing. I was like "what the hell is McVanilla doing!?!" until Mac admitted to opting out of plays, than it became how much is McDaniels and how much is Jones. They both gotta get blamed equally.

Reminder, it wasn't Josh McDaniels that chose to kick a near sixty yard field goal instead of going for it against Tampa Bay. It wasn't McDaniels who sacrificed points at halftime versus Dallas. It wasn't McDaniels who chose to punt in overtime against Dallas. That conservative playcalling was from Bill Belichick.

McDaniels has had to deal with Mac Jones changing plays, he's had to deal with Bill Belichick being conservative in game. In 2020 it was Bill's decision to stick with Cam over Newton. McDaniels let us know it wasn't up to him. McDaniels let us know that not going for it on Sunday was Bill's decision as well. It appears Belichick doesn't trust the offense or is over protective of Mac Jones. After two meltdowns before week one, maybe Bill doesn't think Jones can handle the pressure.

That's the thing us fans seem to forget, this is Bill's team. Unless Robert Kraft steps in, what Belichick says goes. We've seen Bill be conservative this season, can anyone say that this "new" Bill Belichick isn't restricting McDaniels's playcalling?

Now some of you are going to say that he's never done it before. Go back to last season, there's a lot of things he's never done before. This is the "new" player friendly Bill Belichick. Go back six or seven years ago and refer to him as player friendly and pats nation will call you an idiot. So it's not unlikely that Bill is meddling in the offensive game planning and playcalling this season. And I just gave one possibility as to why.

Things with this team this season have been weird. They hung in with and should've tried to put away both the Buccaneers and Cowboys but didn't. The team is playing conservative ball and seems to be lacking fundamentals, awareness, and discipline. Maybe Bill is treating this like the preseason, maybe this is how Bill tanks, maybe there's something going on internally, who knows.

Even though McDaniels is the offensive coordinator, at the moment we cannot give him all the blame because at the moment it looks like Belichick and Jones are owning some of it. Keep in mind that the Patriots are currently holding the number seven pick. The Patriots supposedly had a great draft. If we look at recent history Dallas had two bad seasons, and built a good team from the draft. Trying to mimic what Dallas did is the only other thing that makes sense besides the Patriots protecting Mac Jones. For all our sales, we best hope Bill doesn't see Jones as being as fragile as Ryan Leaf.