00:00 The next candidate that we heard about Nick Kaley.
00:02 Now it was reported by Mike Reese that he seems like he's going to end up being the
00:06 favorite to get the Patriots offensive coordinator job.
00:09 We've also seen guys like Josh McDaniels, like they haven't had an interview with him yet,
00:13 but the name has been floated around.
00:14 I know Jeff Howe mentioned on your podcast last week that Josh McDaniels, somebody who could
00:18 shoot up potentially, but Nick Kaley is the first guy on the offensive coordinator circuit.
00:22 Who's actually come in for a second interview.
00:24 So he's kind of a guy I feel like people don't know a ton about because, you know, tight ends
00:28 coaches, they don't get a lot of credit, but there's a pattern where a lot of the offensive
00:32 coordinators that Patriots have brought in are guys with tight ends experience.
00:35 So what do you think about Kaley as a candidate?
00:38 Is he someone that excites you?
00:39 Do you not really like the idea of bringing in someone who already has such close ties?
00:43 And also, do you think that him, you know, basically going off to the Patagon with the Rams
00:47 was enough time for him to be able to bring a lot of the things from the McVay system that
00:51 people really want to see them integrate and kind of give them a blend of old and new?
00:55 Yeah, so there's a lot there, but I want to start back at the last question, because something
00:59 just hit me as far as we talk about titles, right?
01:01 And some people think they're important, like others don't when they're billed.
01:04 It's interesting to me that the titles were really the genesis of Gerard's career here,
01:08 where they created a position for him as inside linebackers coach in 2019,
01:12 not a job that had been filled in the years prior just to get him on staff.
01:16 And back in those days, it wasn't just Gerard coming in to plug a hole in the defensive staff.
01:20 But as you mentioned, cornerbacks and safeties meeting together, that changed that offseason
01:25 because it was Mike Pellegrino, a very young corners coach, was meeting with Steve Belichick,
01:29 who then was coaching the safeties. So they did have different positions,
01:32 but they were all in the same room at the same time coaching the same things.
01:35 And so whoever you want to slice it up, it's just you're saying that sometimes they don't matter.
01:40 That's how Gerard got in the door in the first place, creating a whole job for him as the
01:43 fastest rising assistant ever under Belichick. And now if you want to expand the staff, just
01:47 go a step further to pull these guys in. And even though they might be doing the same things as a
01:51 traditional defensive backs coach, this is a tool that can be used in the hiring process for a job
01:57 that might not seem as appealing as it once was under the greatest coach of all time and with the
02:01 greatest quarterback of all time in-house. That being said, Nick Haley, he and I actually have a,
02:06 I don't want to say a connection. It's a little looser than that, but I covered Joe Morehead,
02:11 who was the offensive coordinator at Penn State when he was there 2016, 2017.
02:15 Great years for Penn State. They had Saquon Barkley. They had Mike Kisicki. They had Chris
02:19 Godwin. They had me on the beat. And Joe Morehead was one of the first ones to hire Nick Haley when
02:25 he was a low level assistant at Akron, where Joe Morehead has since gone back into the head coach.
02:29 And so I reached out to Joe after coming here and said, "Hey, I know this guy used to work under
02:33 you. What do you think?" Asked Nick by Sorsa. It was a flower bouquet tossing both ways. So
02:39 for people who work with him back when he first got into coaching or players that I've since
02:43 talked to who worked under him or guys on the staff that I've spoken to about him,
02:47 I'll say the same few things. He's exceptionally hardworking. He's bright. And he's understanding.
02:53 So he doesn't come from the old school of just going to, "You're going to do this, and this is
02:57 why." I think the question is, as good as he's been as a tight ends coach, I do think the experience
03:01 under McVeigh is valuable. Now, one year is very different. Like say your freshman year in college
03:06 versus when you leave as a senior to installing a new system. I don't think he could do that with
03:12 all the minutiae. But a coordinator job, just like when you go from coordinator to head coach, head coach is
03:17 much more administrative. I make the analogy all the time. That's the principle of the school. You're
03:21 doing the hiring, the organizing, the vision setting. OK, you're not making the lesson plans and doing
03:26 the teaching day to day like a teacher would. But when you're a teacher, it's different than being
03:31 kind of like the TA, where you can do some of the grading or the research or a little bit of the
03:36 lesson plans. You don't have to be there at the front of the room saying, "This is what we're
03:40 going to do. This is how we're going to do it. Oh, and if you don't do what I say, I get to hand down
03:44 the discipline." So my question is about Nick, clearly a very good TA in this kind of position
03:49 coach world. When you need to go to the front of the room, you need to handle quarterbacks, you need
03:54 to handle the whole entire offense and things don't go so well. We just don't know because he's never
03:58 coached quarterbacks. He's never called plays. He's never been a coordinator. It doesn't mean he's not
04:03 deserving or he doesn't have that potential. But I think it's telling that he not only got
04:07 passed over last year by Bill Belichick, but unofficially in 2022, when he was sitting there
04:12 waiting, longest-tenured offensive assistant, again, someone I think is a good, good coach,
04:16 and Bill passed him over from Matt Patricia into a judge, and we all know that was a mistake.
04:20 So I just, I'm curious about that aspect. Because if you're the Patriots, I think you want someone
04:24 with coordinator experience or experience coaching quarterbacks. Nick doesn't have either. But he
04:30 also, as you alluded to, might be able to split the difference between, "We'll keep the good stuff
04:34 that we used to do, but evolve it, modernize it with the Ram stuff," which oddly enough, what Nick
04:40 did for Sean McVay last year when they went away from all this outside zone traditional boot stuff
04:44 and became much more of a duo power running team out there and went from a bottom-10 scoring
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05:07 NFL. And he's got a unique perspective too, especially one, working under McVay, they kind
05:13 of followed similar career paths where they were assistants, tight ends coaches for a while under
05:17 brilliant offensive minds. Obviously, I do not want to try to insinuate that Kaylee is going to
05:22 become the next Sean McVay. But again, with the value of a tight ends coach, you know, Zach
05:26 Robinson would have been a great hire, obviously. Pass game coordinator, which is really just right
05:31 below offensive coordinator in a lot of ways and quarterbacks coach. If you're going to bring in a
05:34 rookie quarterback, you'd like to have that dynamic, but Kaylee worked in both the pass
05:39 game and the run game, which again is a unique perspective. You don't always get on the offense
05:43 side of the ball. If you're coaching receivers, you're coaching quarterbacks. And then when you
05:46 talk about the McVay system, one of the biggest staples is making pass with like run and vice
05:51 versa, where you really don't know what's happening. And then a big part of that is
05:54 motion and understanding what's the idea behind it. You know, motion is great. It's really nice.
05:59 If you're top 10 in the league, when it comes to those ratings and everything, but what's the
06:03 purpose of it and can you use it to sequence plays and do that efficiently? So I'm really
06:07 interested to see if he does get the opportunity, how he's able to take the knowledge he got from
06:12 that tight ends role and then incorporate it and say, okay, we are going to have a vision.
06:16 And I understand how we're going to be able to build these concepts on top of each other.
06:20 There's obviously always going to be the road bumps where your first year play caller,
06:24 you don't know what you don't know. It's the same thing with Gerard Mayo, but they've also alluded
06:27 to the fact that Josh McDaniels or someone else, not necessarily McDaniels, but someone else could
06:31 come on as a senior offensive advisor. So if you have anything to add onto that, please. And as
06:36 well, is there anybody that you think would fit in that senior advisor role? Yeah, it's a really
06:41 good question because I think too, the other part of this is, you know, not who would necessarily
06:45 be above and not in terms of power, but title senior advisor, someone older who's looking over
06:49 the whole operation, who's going to be underneath Nick Caley, if he gets hired, because if you're
06:53 Nick Caley, let's say the job even gets offered to you, there are things you need to consider.
06:57 One of which is salary. And I am not aboard this train and the caboose. I'm not near the conductor
07:02 of people think the crafts are cheap, and that's really a big issue. They are dead last in as far
07:06 as cash spending on the roster. But coaching, let's see this play out when they need to hire
07:10 a candidate pool. If people keep turning them down to me, that might be a red flag, but I'm not there
07:14 yet. So there's the salary part. The second part would be who does he get to hire? And does he get
07:19 to hire anyone? Or is this going to be a case when Bill O'Brien came in and Bill says, you get one
07:24 hire, that's it. And you have to deal with the staff that I already have in place who come from
07:28 different backgrounds and philosophies and levels of experience. Or does Nick get to take the RAM
07:32 staff with him? Because if I'm him, installing a new system, which will require teaching and buy-in
07:38 and problem solving early on, I want guys who have been in Los Angeles longer than I have,
07:43 and who are generally under me. I don't know the answers to those questions. Nick might be
07:47 finding out right now if they offer him at the end of a second interview, which is supposedly
07:50 wrapping up today. So that's where my question is. And that then would in turn answer your question
07:55 of who's the senior advisor. And I want to say, because I brought this up on my podcast and wrote
08:00 about it last Wednesday. And I don't want to say I had buyer's remorse saying, "Hey, blind resume
08:04 test. Josh McDaniel should be the favorite here." Him, Kaylee, and Zach Robinson, he's a
08:08 developed quarterback, has been a coordinator, wants to be in New England. I got some pushback
08:13 internally from the league about that pretty quickly. But I would just say this, if he's
08:17 willing to take a backseat, like we talked about with Steve Belichick, it's hard to argue against
08:22 just that resume part. The resume isn't everything. Old dynamics are hard to let go of and evolve and
08:27 go with. And Drive might want nothing to do with Josh McDaniels. But I think the salary part and
08:32 who coaches under Kaylee, if he indeed is hired, is really key. Because if he doesn't get enough
08:36 power and/or money, he just might say no. - And you mentioned him filling out his staff.
08:41 There's also the question of, is he going to be able to get those guys? One, you got to pry them
08:45 away from a Rams team that really looks like they're getting it together with a lot of young
08:48 players. So the development's there. You're kind of intrigued where we can keep this thing going and
08:52 be even better next year. But also you got to compete with Atlanta now. They got Raheem Morris,
08:56 they got Zach Robinson. It's going to be tough to sell New England. Like you mentioned, if they're
09:00 not willing to shell out the cash, that's going to be a really, really tough one. Even if you say,
09:05 "Hey, we've got a top three pick. We've done all this money." I'm looking at free agency right now.
09:09 And I'm thinking, like last night I tweeted, I'll admit that was a little bit of the high
09:14 noons got to me where I was like, "Throw it back at Saquon Barkley." But in all seriousness,
09:18 you look at the offensive weapons available and you start thinking, "All right, a lot of these
09:22 guys are probably going to get franchise tag." So who really are you going to bring in in terms
09:26 of a veteran playmaker who, at least at that point, you can go into the draft and say, "All
09:29 right, we've got a solid stable with guys that we really trust." So it's going to be interesting.
09:34 [Music]
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