What their latest coaching staff additions, including Doug Marrone and Thomas Brown, mean for the Patriots

New England added several coaches to Mike Vrabel’s staff.

The New England Patriots have been busy the last few days, consistently adding new coaches to the staff of first-year head coach Mike Vrabel. On Monday, four additions were reported.

Doug Marrone, Jason Houghtaling and Milton Patterson have joined the club in unannounced roles, while Thomas Brown was brought aboard as tight ends coach and pass game coordinator. What do those and the other most recent coaching staff moves mean for the Patriots, though? Using the information available, let’s try to answer that question from a big picture perspective.

Doug Marrone: TBD

O-line help: Even though his role is not yet known, the expectation is that Marrone will work with the Patriots’ offensive line in some capacity. With 2024 O-line coach Scott Peters not returning, and with his assistant Robert Kugler also potentially on his way out of town, the team has a significant gap to fill — one that Marrone would be more than capable of filling.

The 60-year-old is one of the more experienced offensive line coaches you can find. A former tackle at Syracuse, who also spent time with five NFL teams, he has been coaching O-line since the early 1990s.

Besides working for several college programs, he also coached the position group for the New York Jets, New Orleans Saints and Jacksonville Jaguars, and was a head coach for both the Jaguars and the Buffalo Bills. While his career head coaching record of 40-61 does not stand out — even though it includes one trip to the AFC Championship Game — his résumé is still impressive.

Carryover: The Patriots under head coach Mike Vrabel and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels will focus on versatility, and that will extend to the blocking schemes employed up front. That being said, the team fully moving away from the concepts and terminology used in 2024 is not going to happen either; hiring Marrone is further reflection of that.

Marrone, after all, has a similar offensive background as previous Patriots coordinator Alex Van Pelt: both come from a West Coast/Nathaniel Hackett-inspired system, and use the same protection and run calls up front.

For the Patriots, this carryover will be key. Fact is, after all, that quarterback Drake Maye will be asked to make the calls at the line of scrimmage and at one point autonomously run the offense. Not having to learn an entirely new verbiage will help make the transition from Van Pelt to McDaniels an easier one for the sophomore, and ideally help speed up the process for him to fully run the show when on the field.

Focus on mentality: One of the most infamous quotes coming from the Patriots over the last year was their de facto general manager, Eliot Wolf, claiming that there would be “less of a hard-ass vibe” in New England in 2024. With Marrone coming aboard alongside other veteran coaches such as Vrabel and McDaniels, that will change.

When it comes to Marrone, his focus will be on shaping the mentality of the linemen he is working with — something he said during a coaching clinic in 2024.

“Linemen, what I try to do is I always try to work on mentality and the right way,” he explained. “It’s putting you in the toughest situation, and at times, players — that will wear on them for a little bit. So, for me, all these one-on-ones and all these types of drills, I try to make it a great challenge for us. I try to change the whole mindset.”

Boston College connections: Marrone spent the 2024 season at Boston College, where he served as as senior analyst for football strategy and research under head coach Bill O’Brien. His time at BC might give the Patriots some additional insight into the Eagles’ draft prospects, particularly along the offensive line.

Three names are therefore worth keeping an eye on over the next three months: tackle Ozzy Trapillo, center Drew Kendall and tackle/guard hybrid Jack Conley. Trapillo projects as a mid-round pick, with Kendall and Conley potential late-rounders.

Arm length questions: After the news of Marrone’s hiring broke, Twitter/X user @GimRari — a must-follow for Patriots fans — took a look at some of the offensive tackles his teams have acquired through the draft over the years. The 10 players in question had one thing in common: arm length.

In total, Marrone was involved in 10 tackle picks. Out of these 10, 9 of them had arms longer than 33”! And the only one that was below 33” was a 6th round pick in 2004! Marrone seems to put a heavy emphasis on arm length and I would be surprised to see that change.

Marrone’s preference for longer tackles might change the draft outlook for the Patriots at that particular position. Players such as Josh Conerly Jr. or Aireontae Ersery — the latter of whom was selected in Pat Lane’s recent seven-round mock draft — might therefore be more realistic targets for the team than Will Campbell, if the pre-draft measurements look as expected.

Thomas Brown: Tight ends coach/Pass game coordinator

Diverse background: When it comes to diversity on offense, the tight end position is as multi-faceted as it gets: coaches and players alike need intimate knowledge of both routes and route combinations as well the requisite blocking schemes on both pass and run plays. The Patriots’ new tight ends coach certainly brings the experience in all of those areas to the table.

Thomas Brown, who was a running back during his active playing days in the 2000s, has worked multiple jobs before arriving in New England. He started out coaching running backs at several colleges, and later also added offensive coordinator duties. Since making the jump to the NFL as a member of the Los Angeles Rams under Sean McVay in 2020, he coached running backs, worked as an offensive coordinator, a passing game coordinator, and an assistant and interim head coach.

While he only coached tight ends for one year — with the Rams in 2022 — he offers plenty of experience working on the offensive side of the ball.

Something to prove: Brown may have experience, but his success in the NFL has been inconsistent so far. Naturally, not all of that falls directly on him but his offenses have still not performed to the level one would like to see.

As offensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers in 2023, for example, he led an offense that was 30th in the NFL in points per drive (1.19) and 29th in expected points added per play (-0.160). As passing game and offensive coordinator with the Chicago Bears last season, he led an offense that ended the season ranked 27th (1.62) and 26th (-0.072) in those two categories, respectively.

In both Carolina and Chicago, Brown worked with rookie quarterbacks drafted first overall. While not solely responsible for their development, fact remains that neither Bryce Young nor Caleb Williams performed particularly well in offenses he (co-)coordinated.

A first in New England: The passing coordinator title is a relatively new trend in the NFL, and something the Patriots have not had on their staff so far. What Brown’s role will look like in practice remains to be seen, but it will be fascinating to find out how he and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels will work together.

As far as McDaniels is concerned, he did work with a pass game coordinator before: Scott Turner held that role with the Las Vegas Raiders in 2023, the year McDaniels got fired as head coach. Obviously, though, the circumstances are different heading into the 2025 season: McDaniels is now the OC, eliminating one level between him and the pass game coordinator.

Another former head coach: Even though he only held the Chicago Bears’ head coaching title for a little over a month to close out the 2024 season after Matt Eberflus’ firing, Brown still served in that role for multiple games. As a consequence, he is now one of up to four coaches on Mike Vrabel’s offensive staff with head coaching experience.

Joining him in that group are Josh McDaniels, Doug Marrone and potentially Ben McAdoo. McAdoo’s status remains unclear at this point in time, but even if the senior offensive assistant is not retained for the upcoming season the experience on that side of the ball is still significant.

Other recent coaching hires

Riley Larkin (Offensive assistant): Once again, the Patriots are diving into a John Carroll program that also produced the likes of Josh McDaniels, Nick Caserio and Dave Ziegler though the years. Larkin is significantly younger than those three, still playing quarterback in 2018. Since then, he went into coaching his former position at the high school level and later serving as offensive analyst and offensive assistant, respectively, at Middle Tennessee and Ohio State.

While set to serve as an offensive assistant under McDaniels in New England, it would not be a surprise if he again worked closely with the quarterback position. If so, he might effectively end up succeeding last year’s assistant quarterbacks coach, Evan Rothstein.

Clinton McMillan (TBD): McMillan arrives in New England in a yet-to-be-announced capacity, but it is no stretch of the imagination that he will join the defensive staff. After all, he worked as a defensive assistant, defensive line assistant, and pass rush specialist during his four years with the Tennessee Titans — including three under Mike Vrabel.

His title as a pass rush specialist also brings back memories of Joe Kim, who left the organization this offseason. Kim originally arrived in New England as a pass rush coach in 2018, and later was named director of skill development.

Kevin Richardson (TBD): The futures of cornerbacks coach Mike Pellegrino and safeties coach Brian Belichick remains unclear, something that is also true for coaching assistants Vinny DePalma and Jamael Lett. Regardless of happens to them, incoming Kevin Richardson — who most recently worked as assistant defensive backs coach at Illinois — seems like a safe bet to be working with the DBs in some shape or form in 2025.

The jump to position coach might be a bit steep given his lack of experience at the NFL level, but he will factor into the mix regardless. At the very least, he might hold a role similar to that of DePalma and Lett last year.

Milton Patterson (TBD): The Patriots are in the process of rebuilding their linebacker room, starting with not retaining coaches Dont’a Hightower and Drew Wilkins. Patterson helping fill one of those roles — with the other possibly going to recent coaching addition Zak Kuhr — seems like a realistic outcome.

Patterson coached linebackers at Florida A&M the last four years, including 2024 when he also served as the team’s defensive coordinator. Like Kevin Richardson, he has no coaching experience at the NFL level, but his superior college résumé might allow him to jump in and immediately start out as a position coach rather than a defensive assistant.

Jason Houghtaling (TBD): We started by looking at the offensive line, and we’ll end that way. Houghtaling was assistant O-line coach on Mike Vrabel’s Titans staff in 2021 and 2022 before being handed the keys to the room in 2023. He spent last season as assistant offensive line coach in Chicago, working on the same staff as Thomas Brown, and now is reuniting with Vrabel in New England.

Realistically, there are two possible roles he could fill in 2025. Houghtaling could either take the offensive line coaching job outright, or return to assist a potential O-line coach Doug Marrone. From this perspective, the second scenario appears more likely.