McDaniels and Maye will begin football conversations next week.
Drake Maye has not been able to talk football yet with offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. That will come on Monday, when the New England Patriots officially begin their offensive program.
For now, conversations between the two have centered around personal things: Maye’s family, fiancée Ann Michael, his upcoming wedding plans, etc. The early talks have only left McDaniels more excited to work with the 22-year old gunslinger.
“I haven’t had a chance to really do football with him yet, but that’ll come. We’ll have plenty of time here coming up next week, but I’m smitten by the young man, in terms of just his personality,” McDaniels said Thursday at Gillette Stadium.
“We’ve had an opportunity to spend some time that has nothing to do with football with one another, which I think has been great. Very beneficial and productive, just to get to know him, who he is, what he’s all about, what he cares about.”
As the two get to work with the rest of the offense on football next week, the conversations will evolve and literally take on a new language. That will be due to McDaniels teaching Maye his system, which will be a change in verbiage from Maye’s rookie season.
“I think next week and beyond will be super fun for me to really get to know him from a football perspective and start teaching our terminology and language and seeing how he learns best and how he acclimates,” McDaniels said. “[The language will] be different. I think that sometimes can get overblown.”
McDaniels’ offensive language will even be somewhat different to him this season. After spending the last year off visiting different teams at both the NFL and collegiate level, McDaniels has both refined and streamlined his offensive terminology.
Much of that process has also come of late working alongside his new offensive coaching staff, which features plenty of coaches (Ashton Grant, Thomas Brown, Todd Downing, etc.) with different schematic backgrounds.
“We’ve honestly, we’ve changed some things and I’m in the process of doing the same thing too,” McDaniels said. “What we used to call something now we call something else cause we’ve agreed that it’s the best thing to do for the team. So we’re all going to be in that same boat.
“There’ll be a period of adjustment but I don’t think that it’ll be a big deal.”
One thing that will not change, however, is the stagey side of things. For McDaniels, the strategy always revolves around the personnel — which now includes putting Maye in the best position to succeed.
“The strategy is all based about your players and what do we have? What are our strengths? How do we maximize the personnel that’s on our team and our on our offense?,” McDaniels said. “And that part is going to be different like it is every year.”