Bill Belichick: Patriots Will 'Take Advantage' of Next Starting QB's Skill Set
For the first time since the New England Patriots' Wild Card loss to the Tennessee Titans in January and Tom Brady's departure, the media was able to speak with head coach Bill Belichick on Monday.
With a quarterback competition set to take place in Foxboro this summer, there was a question brought up during the conference call with Belichick about how willing he was to morph the Patriots' offense - which hasn't changed much in the past 20 years - around their new quarterback.
“Over the last two decades, everything we did, every decision we made in terms of planning was made with the idea of how to make things best for Tom Brady," Belichick said, via Nora Princiotti of The Boston Globe. "Whoever the QB is we'll try to make things work smoothly and efficiently for that player and take advantage of his strengths and his skills."
Belichick has sustained a high level of success during his tenure in New England because of him and his coaching staff's flexibility in being able to build around their player's strengths rather than plugging in players that merely fit their system. On defense, it has caused them to change their base alignments and play calling a bit over the years. On offense, the system has stayed relatively the same because Brady was always under center and he was the most important part of that unit. But now that Brady is no longer there, a shift in philosophy could be in the works, which could bring about a very different looking offense for the Patriots in 2020.
A change in philosophy will ultimately be determined by who the starting QB is moving forward for New England. If it's a pocket passing-type quarterback like Brian Hoyer or Jarrett Stidham, then we may see a similar looking offense to the Patriots offense of old. But if New England drafts a mobile QB later this month and that QB wins the starting competition this summer, then there is the potential for offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to completely revamp how the offense looks, similarly to how the Ravens handled their transition from Joe Flacco to Lamar Jackson at quarterback.
While Belichick's response to the question about morphing the offense is what we should come to expect from him based on our knowledge of how Belichick runs his team, it nevertheless highlights how drastically different the six-time Super Bowl champions could become in the post-Tom Brady era.
