Josh McDaniels says he wouldn’t be in NFL if it weren’t for Belichick, Patriots organization

When Josh McDaniels and the Las Vegas Raiders face off against his former team, the New England Patriots, it won’t be their first meeting this year, but it’ll count this time.

The Raiders and Patriots held joint practices together leading into the final preseason game this summer. The Black and Silver went on to win the game and end their preseason with a perfect 4-0 record.

Both teams will see different rosters though. The Raiders didn’t play their starters in the preseason. When talking about the preparation leading up to Sunday, coach Josh McDaniels said there are some things he sees that he’s familiar with, and other things that are new to him.

“They do different things each week against the opponent based on what they think gives them the best chance to win,” McDaniels said. “And it’s very challenging because what you see on tape is not necessarily what you’re going to get.”

But, there’s more to this opponent than others for McDaniels. He started his NFL career with New England in 2001 and for 14 non-consecutive years, was the offensive coordinator for Bill Belichick.

“Yeah. I mean, look, it’s obvious I wouldn’t be here, or even in the National Football League, if it wasn’t for Bill. Robert [Kraft], Jonathan [Kraft] gave me a great opportunity a long time ago,” McDaniels said. “He’s been invaluable to me in a lot of ways. Hard to measure all of them. Obviously, football background, understanding how this league works. I got to see firsthand how to try to do it the right way. His philosophy on everything; offseason, training camp, in-season, postseason, evaluations, draft, free agency. He gave a lot of his time to me, and I was able to hopefully pick up as much as I could. Still got a lot to learn. He was a great mentor for me, not only in football, but also just in in terms of when I got there.”

The Raiders coach went on to say there are things he picked up during his second stint with the team, too. In 2009, McDaniels left New England to become the head coach for the Denver Broncos. He returned to the Patriots organization after two seasons away.

“And now I’m watching him the second time around, and maybe the first time I didn’t even know to look for it, and now I’m looking for different things. How he handles adversity, what he’s doing here in the offseason, how he’s handling the bye week? What’s he doing in April, May, June, etc. that maybe I wasn’t even clued in on that existed before I left. And so, it gave me a great opportunity to kind of look at it through a different lens and really try to take some time to process those things while I was watching somebody that’s obviously the best that’s ever done it do it again.”

🔴🎥 Live: Josh McDaniels addresses the media from the Intermountain Healthcare Performance Center. https://t.co/9S3CXztgx9

— Las Vegas Raiders (@Raiders) December 14, 2022

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