What hiring Mike McCarthy as offensive assistant means for the Patriots

What hiring Mike McCarthy as offensive assistant means for the Patriots

The New England Patriots are far from done adding coaches to their staff. On Wednesday night, news broke that the team has hired former Brown offensive line coach Mike McCarthy as an offensive assistant. So far, McCarthy is the 12th external hire under new head coach Jerod Mayo.

What exactly does the move mean for the Patriots, though? Here is a quick-hit analysis, focusing on the big picture of New England’s coaching search.

The Patriots add another coach with O-line experience

McCarthy held various jobs since ending his playing career and moving into an off-field role in 2007. He started out primarily in scouting and video research, before later adding quality control and position coaching to his résumé.

Most of his experience was built while working along the offensive line. He worked with the position group at the College of New Jersey in 2009, at Tulane in 2012 and 2013, at the Detroit Lions in 2016 and 2017, and the last five years at Brown.

This makes McCarthy the latest coaching addition with extensive O-line experience after New England previously hired Scott Peters and Robert Kugler.

Two offensive assistants are now part of the staff

Including coordinator Alex Van Pelt, the Patriots now have seven coaches on their offensive staff. Two of those will be listed as coaching assistants: McCarthy, as well as Ben McAdoo.

McAdoo, a former head coach with the New York Giants as offensive coordinator for the Carolina Panthers, will be a senior assistant. Whether or not McCarthy will be given a similar distinction remains to be seen, but it would not be a surprise if his responsibilities would be different from McAdoo’s regardless of title.

As noted above, after all, McCarthy has worked primarily with O-line through his coaching career. McAdoo, on the other hand, has done a lot of work with quarterbacks either as a position coach or through his roles as head coach and coordinator.

New England’s coaching roster gets deeper, but big questions remain

Even though the Patriots have added another coach to their offensive staff, two big vacancies have yet to be addressed: New England does not yet have a wide receivers and a tight ends coach. How exactly those positions will be filled is anyone’s guess at this point in time, even though it seems likely coaches with a connection to Alex Van Pelt might get preferential treatment.

If so, Chad O’Shea — himself a former wide receivers coach in New England — would be a name worth keeping an eye on. In fact, the addition of Tiquan Underwood as assistant wide receivers coach might be a hint in that direction given that the two worked together in Miami back in 2019.

That being said, the team’s still-current wide receivers coach, Troy Brown, has reportedly been offered an opportunity to stay with the club as well. Whether that means he will continue working with the wideouts even if he accepts the offer is unknown at this point.

As far as the tight end position is concerned, there appear to be multiple candidates as well.

Evan Rothstein’s status moves into the spotlight

If you had to draw a direct line from the Patriots to Mike McCarthy, it would go right through Evan Rothstein: the two men both spent time with the Lions in 2016 and 2017.

Whereas Rothstein worked as an offensive assistant focused on research and analysis in those two seasons, McCarthy was an offensive quality control coach and offensive line assistant. Six years after the latter departed Detroit, there is a chance that he will reunite with his former colleague now.

Rothstein, after all, is one of two members of the outgoing staff whose status is still up in the air (the other being Troy Brown). He originally arrived in New England in 2021 to work in research and analysis, and moved to offensive assistant the following year. In 2023, he was promoted to assistant quarterbacks coach under Bill O’Brien.

Despite working closely together, O’Brien did not take Rothstein with him to his new gig at Boston College. And with McCarthy now added to the mix, the signs might start to point toward him potentially staying put.