Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels knows that Sunday’s win over the Dolphins saw their offense do “some things we really haven’t done much of around here for a long time,” but he insisted on Tuesday that the team’s overall approach hasn’t changed.
Quarterback Cam Newton ran the ball 15 times, which McDaniels said was a function of putting players in their best position to succeed. He said that’s “the same boat” that the team has always been in and that they will continue to adjust their approach for each opponent in order to maximize their chances of winning.
McDaniels said that a number of Newton’s runs could have been handoffs had the Miami defense given him different looks and that the team will continue to come up with multiple ways of attacking defenses.
“I don’t know that any one thing, if you do it over and over and over, is sustainable in our league,” McDaniels said, via Karen Guregian of the Boston Herald. “The coaches and the players each week are too good. I’ve called 60 passes. Believe me, I don’t want to live in that world too long, or you’re going to get in trouble, whether it’s injuries, or the success you have is going to deteriorate, or too much of this or that, depending on what it is, and you’re going to become too predictable.”
Newton’s too good a runner for that not to be part of any plan McDaniels puts together and he said the team has to be smart in order to “make sure we don’t put him in a situation that could hurt our team or himself” in the coming weeks.