Why are the Patriots hiring Alabama OC Bill O’Brien? Mac Jones relationship, Matt Patricia failure key New England’s move

The Patriots stood pat during the 2022 NFL offseason even after losing many key members of their offensive staff.

They are correcting that mistake with an offensive coordinator hire early in the 2023 coaching cycle.

Bill O’Brien will be making his return to the Patriots 11 years after his initial stint as the team’s offensive coordinator. The veteran coach spent nine of those years as head coach of Penn State and the Texans before returning to the offensive coordinator ranks at Alabama the last two seasons.

While O’Brien’s tenure in Houston didn’t end well, he has built capable offenses during his coaching career. He will be asked to do the same in New England as the Patriots recover from just their third losing season under Bill Belichick’s watch.

Why did the Patriots settle on O’Brien as their top target? It boils down to a few key factors, but it is largely based on relationships he already has with the organization and quarterback Mac Jones.

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Why are the Patriots hiring Bill O’Brien?

The Patriots are hiring O’Brien in an effort to fix an offense that struggled greatly during the 2022 NFL season. This was thanks, in part, to the offensive staff that Belichick put in place for the campaign.

After losing offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels to the Raiders along with several position coaches, Belichick opted not to hire a new coordinator. Instead, he piecemealed together an offensive staff that was led by play-caller Matt Patricia and quarterbacks coach Joe Judge.

The results were disastrous. Patricia, a former defensive coordinator and Lions head coach, and Judge, a former special teams coordinator and Giants head coach, struggled to get the Patriots’ offense in sync all year. Mac Jones regressed badly in his second season while the offensive line playing in front of him floundered as it adjusted to a new scheme.

Overall, the Patriots averaged just 314.6 yards per game, which ranked 26th in the NFL, and 21.4 points per game, good for 17th in the league. Perhaps more damning was that the New England offense ranked below average both running and passing the ball; that marked the first time that had happened since Belichick’s first season with the team in 2000.

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Given the team’s offensive struggles and Jones’ regression, it was clear that something needed to change during the 2023 offseason. As such, the Patriots decided to fill the vacant offensive coordinator position to get the offense back on track.

O’Brien was tapped for the job in part because he is a familiar face who has experience working with Belichick before. He was a member of the Patriots coaching staff from 2007 to 2011 before he took the head coaching job at Penn State, so that gives him a rapport with Belichick.

But perhaps more importantly, his experience at Alabama gives him familiarity with Jones. That could help the young quarterback regain the strong form he demonstrated during his rookie season.

Bill O’Brien’s relationship with Mac Jones

O’Brien joined Alabama in January of 2021 after the incumbent offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian left to become the head coach at Texas. His two-year tenure did not overlap with Jones’ college playing days, but they did briefly work together as Jones prepared for the 2021 NFL Draft.

It wasn’t necessarily O’Brien who was coaching up Jones at that time. In fact, the quarterback was actually teaching O’Brien the Alabama offense as the veteran coach prepared to call it for the first time in his career.

O’Brien admitted after his first season that learning a new system rather than implementing his own was “a challenging thing.” He also made sure to give Jones a tip of the cap when mentioning those that helped him learn it.

“I had a lot of people help me, people that were here before, guys on the coaching staff, obviously Bryce [Young],” O’Brien said late in the 2021 season, per AL.com. “I’ve said before, Mac Jones, when he was working out for the draft, helped me a little bit, which was great. So I’m really thankful to those people.”

That O’Brien and Jones at least have a working relationship should allow them to quickly get off on the right foot as O’Brien rejoins the Patriots. O’Brien should have a familiarity with what Jones does well and can bring over parts of the Alabama offense in which Jones excelled along with his own offensive scheme.

Those offensive improvements could go a long way toward reversing Jones’ regression between his first and second seasons.

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Bill O’Brien’s stats as Patriots OC, Alabama OC

It will also help that O’Brien has a history of offensive success in his 15 years since joining the Patriots staff in 2007. He has only been a coordinator for three years in that span — he spent most of that time as a head coach at Penn State and with the Texans — but has performed well in his stops both in New England and at Alabama.

O’Brien’s lone season as a Patriots offensive coordinator came in 2011, and he fared well in that role. He led the Patriots to a top-three finish in both total yards and scoring while the team posted a 13-3 record. Tom Brady excelled under O’Brien, throwing for a then-career-high 5,235 yards and 39 touchdowns, and helped key a run to Super Bowl 46, which the Patriots lost 21-17 against the Giants.

O’Brien’s performance during that Super Bowl run was enough to earn him the head coaching job at Penn State. It would be nearly a decade before he held an offensive coordinator spot again at Alabama in 2021.

Alabama’s two-year stint with the Crimson Tide wasn’t quite as impressive as his one-year stint as the Patriots’ offensive coordinator. Still, Alabama finished with a top-six scoring offense in each of his two seasons with the team and posted a combined record of 24-4 during his time there. He also led Bryce Young to a Heisman Trophy win in 2021 after Young posted 4,872 yards, 50 total touchdowns (47 passing, three rushing) and seven interceptions in 15 games.

The one mark on O’Brien’s resume is that Alabama didn’t win a national championship during his two years with the program.

Bill O’Brien’s coaching record with Texans

O’Brien’s experience as an NFL head coach should also help as he becomes a coordinator at the NFL level once again.

O’Brien enjoyed success in his early years with the Texans, leading them to winning campaigns in five of his first six seasons. He also got them to the playoffs four times but had a record of just 2-4 in six games.

Overall, O’Brien posted a 52-48 record in 100 regular-season games with the Texans. His tenure was ultimately undone by his misses after assuming a general manager role in 2020 along with the team’s 0-4 start to the 2020 season.

Below is a year-by-year breakdown of his record with the Texans:

While O’Brien’s time in Houston didn’t end well, it’s worth noting that his successors have posted a combined record of 11-34-1 since his firing. O’Brien is partly responsible for that given some of the strange moves he made as general manager — which included trading DeAndre Hopkins for David Johnson and a second-round pick — but the Texans’ dysfunction certainly went beyond O’Brien.