Patriots’ 2020 offense worth revisiting with Josh McDaniels back as offensive coordinator

With Drake Maye on the roster, McDaniels might dust off some of his old quarterback run concepts.

Wedged between eras and taking place in the midst of a global pandemic, the New England Patriots’ 2020 season is most notable for being the first after long-time quarterback Tom Brady’s departure.

While Brady was busy adding to his legacy and leading Tampa Bay to a Super Bowl win, the Patriots had to reinvent themselves on the offensive side of the ball. They did so by bringing in former league MVP Cam Newton, and designing an offense centered around the run game — including the quarterback.

The bottom line was, admittedly, not impressive. The Patriots missed the playoffs with a 7-9 record and ended the year ranked in the bottom third in scoring and scoring efficiency; they ended up drafting Mac Jones 15th overall the following offseason and eventually moved on from Newton in August 2021.

However, with Josh McDaniels returning for a third stint as the team’s offensive coordinator, and with dual-threat QB Drake Maye now running the show in New England, a look back to 2020 is warranted. At the very least, it might give us an idea about what to expect from the Patriots this coming season in case they dow want to lean heavy into the quarterback run game for the first time since Newton’s departure.

So, let’s take a look at some of the concepts McDaniels drew up five years ago and what they might look like in 2025.

Patriots 2020 quarterback run concepts

Power/long trap: Power and trap are similar plays, using a combination of a double team and a pulling backside guard to create an opening to the front of the play.

The Patriots used those concepts — which are, in basic terms, variations of the same idea — quite a bit in 2020. They were able to because they did not only have a 6-foot-5, 245-pound quarterback capable of hitting the hole and taking on incoming defenders but also two of the best guards in the NFL: Joe Thuney and Shaq Mason were superb pullers capable of identifying their targets and clearing space.

The Patriots’ starting guards in 2025 performing at the same consistent level — whoever they will be — should not necessarily be expected. That said, the likes of Cole Strange, Michael Onwenu and Layden Robinson have shown in the past that they have the short-area burst and physical attitude to execute power and trap plays if asked to do so.

Counter: As with every offensive concept, there are variations over variations. The basic goal remains the same each time, though: create numbers advantages in the box by pulling linemen — usually the backside tackle and guard — across the formation; teams also use fullbacks, tight ends or receivers to perform those down blocks.

The first play below, a Cam Newton touchdown run against the Seattle Seahawks in Week 2, sees guard Shaq Mason and off-set fullback Jakob Johnson as the blockers in question. Newton follows their lead in order to cross the goal line for a score.

The Patriots appear to be willing to reintegrate a fullback into their offensive system, a position they have not used since moving away from the McDaniels offense after his 2022 offseason departure. With McDaniels now back, so will be the fullback it seems: New England signed free agent Giovanni Ricci — a tight end/fullback hybrid — to a reserve/futures deal earlier this week.

Zone/Gap read: We are lumping two concepts together here because they effectively work in the same way from a quarterback perspective. As with all QB reads, it starts with identifying a key defender — usually an end or outside linebacker on the line of scrimmage — that will remain unblocked and is put in conflict to play either the handoff or the quarterback run. Depending on that defender’s decision and movement, the ball is then either kept or handed off to create space for whoever the ballcarrier ends up being.

There are, obviously, defensive counters to those type of plays such as scrape or sit techniques. Still, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, the read is the read is the read.

Where those two concepts differ is the blocking up front. It is not hard to guess what that difference is: one uses zone blocking and puts linemen into motion and space, the other employs man blocking targeting specific gaps.

In the past, the McDaniels-led Patriots employed a mix of both zone and gap schemes up front but relied primarily on the latter. Last season, with Scott Peters coming aboard and New England moving more to a traditional West Coast scheme under him and offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt, the focus lied primarily on zone (even though the execution oftentimes did not look the part).

If the Patriots return to their versatile roots — something head coach Mike Vrabel specifically mentioned he wants out of his offense — a mix of both depending on the available personnel and opponent should be expected again.

Pin and pull: Another play design that relies heavily on pull blockers, as the name suggests. The pin element, meanwhile, is blockers trying to pin the opposing edge and any pursuit tacklers in order to create a lane to the play side for the ball carrier — in this case the quarterback — to maneuver through.

Pin and pull effectively widens the field toward the sideline in order to give the offense more space to work with, and make pursuit from the backside a taller task for the defense. Having not just athletic-enough offensive linemen but a quarterback like Cam Newton, who offered 4.6-speed, makes executing a concept like this more feasible for the offense.

ISO: It’s all about force on this one. Double blocks up front, a fullback to lead the way through the gap, and the will to move the line of scrimmage back and create an opening for the in our case quarterback to push through. ISO is as straight-forward a concept as you can imagine in the running game.

Pulling it off is not that simple, meanwhile. You need your blockers to be on the same page and be able to peel off of blocks to get to the second level. You also need a fullback capable of identifying his assignment and not giving up any ground when charging through the gap.

The first play below sees all of that beautifully put into action: center David Andrews climbs to the second level after a double-team block with Joe Thuney, while fullback Jakob Johnson takes the strongside off-ball linebacker out of the play to allow Cam Newton to get into open territory and just accumulate yards on the ground.

Just like other concepts used by the Patriots in 2020, ISO also relies on the usage of a fullback or another lead blocker in the same mold (could be an H-back, too, for example). It is not hard to see why Jakob Johnson ended up playing 37 percent of offensive snaps during the 2020 season.

QB draw: The draw play is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and one that does not only work with a running back. Here, the quarterback fakes passing the ball before taking it himself and moving up the field.

Obviously, the better the threat of the passing game, the easier to pull this one off. The 2020 Patriots were challenged in that regard, something that should not be the case with Drake Maye under center five years later.

Previewing Patriots QB run game in 2025

In his first two stints as Patriots offensive coordinator, Josh McDaniels has shown the ability to adapt his offense to the personnel available and reinvent his system in accordance with head coach Bill Belichick’s vision. What that vision will look like under new HC Mike Vrabel, whose entire coaching career took place outside of the Belichick tree, will be seen.

McDaniels, however, has the experience to incorporate different elements on the fly — be they more McVay/Shanahan West Coast elements, spread versus condensed looks, different personnel packages, or a quarterback run game as the one he introduced in 2020. As for that latter part of a potential 2025 offense, the team will likely remain diverse from a schematic standpoint but not go that run-heavy.

Cam Newton, after all, carried the ball 127 times for an average of 8.5 carries per game. For comparison, Maye averaged an even 4 runs in his 13 in-game appearances as a rookie. The Patriots more than doubling that number with a player whose arm is clearly superior to that of 2020 Cam Newton should not be expected.

More realistically, McDaniels and the Patriots will implement some of the concepts outlined above and use them as an add-on to an offense primarily focused on passing the ball. If we look back to 2020, meanwhile, that was not the case: New England built its team around the running game that season, calling more runs than passes on the year. That was mostly due to having Newton line up under center.

Drake Maye, on the other hand, is not that same type of player at this stage in his career. So, while there is value to using him on designed runs — something New England’s previous coaching staff decided against doing — it is unlikely to be the core element of the team’s offensive identity in 2025.

That doesn’t mean we won’t still see some zone read, pin-pull or quarterback draw this fall, though.