Can Patriots offense find success under Matt Patricia?

Matt Patricia will man the New England Patriots offensive ship this season, the team recently announced.

But according to both Patricia and sources around the squad, though Patricia serves as the de facto captain of the crew, the offense will be steered by a number of faces within the team's regime. 

Patricia though, who operates under the title of "senior football advisor" (a title with overflowing ambiguity) has been the one feeding Mac Jones plays in training camp per reports, a duty that was previously bestowed upon current Raiders coach Josh McDaniels.

And the two men's coaching pedigrees couldn't be more disparate. McDaniels is a known offensive guru, one who operated as the brains behind Tom Brady's explosive offense that carved up defenses for the better part of the last decade.

Patricia on the other hand, has made his money on defense, first latching on to a college program as a defensive line coach before flipping that success into a linebacker's role with New England. That morphed into a focus on the safeties in 2011, which led to his promotion to defensive coordinator in 2012. He remained there until 2017.

He now leads the offensive line in addition to his "senior football advisor" position after a failed head coaching stint with Detroit (13-29-1 record). And although it hasn't been officially established, at the very least, he's a functional figurehead for the Pats' offensive coordinator job.

However, that's a bad look in the eyes of Nick Wright. 

The "First Things First" cohost crafted up a clever algorithm to grade New England's QB/offensive coordinator partnerships over the years, and its current duo is by far the worst of this century in his opinion.

"Charlie Weis and a young Brady, I would say is 65 points in terms of collective brainpower," Wright said. "Weis had a schematic advantage, and Brady didn't know what he didn't know. Veteran Brady and a young Josh McDaniels I'll give a 75, because of the massive jump from Brady. MVP Brady with Bill O'Brien is an 80. O'Brien was a good playcaller. Old top-shelf Brady, plus a humbled, veteran Josh McDaniels, I'll give a 98.

"What do we give Matt Patricia — a defensive coach — and Mac Jones? What's that, a 14, a 9, 21 at best? Here's a guy who to this day has not figured out that you can't write on laminated paper with a pencil and a quarterback who spent his offseason getting rid of the baby fat."

Chris Broussard couldn't compute the correlation between Patricia's defensive history and any inklings of success on offense either.

"I can't support this," he said. "These are generally the best offensive coordinators/play-callers in the league: Andy Reid, Kellen Moore, Byron Leftwich, Kyle Shanahan, Matt LaFleur, Josh McDaniels. What do they have in common? They've spent their entire careers on the offensive side of the ball.

"Matt Patricia has spent two of his 24 years on the offensive side of the ball."