Josh McDaniels on interpreting Bill Belichick's cryptic instructions

McDaniels also elaborated on what he felt was Belichick’s best quality as a head coach from the standpoint of an assistant.

Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels in Dec. 2019. Jim Davis/Globe Staff

The partnership of Bill Belichick and Josh McDaniels proved to be a highly successful one for the Patriots during their overlapping years in New England, with the latter orchestrating a Tom Brady-led offense in several Super Bowls.

But as McDaniels recently explained during an interview on Julian Edelman’s “Games with Names” podcast, Belichick’s particular instructions on what he wanted for the offensive game plan could be somewhat vague at times.

Amid a lengthy look-back at the Patriots’ Divisional Round playoff win over the Ravens in Jan. 2015, McDaniels gave a window into Belichick’s occasionally cryptic input.

“I remember that Bill had a conversation with me on Tuesday of that week,” said McDaniels. “These were always tricky conversations. He said, ‘I don’t know how much time we want to spend messing around in the running game.’ Whenever he said something like that to me, I’d always say, ‘OK, well tell me what does that mean? Like do you not want me to put any runs in [the game plan]? Like ever?’

“‘Well no, I’m not saying that. I don’t think we’re going to spend a lot of time running the ball,’” McDaniels quoted as Belichick’s response.

“Then he’d leave and I’m like, ‘I still don’t know what I’m doing here,’” recalled McDaniels with a retrospective laugh. He also explained how it would have a knock-on effect in the discussion of the game plan with other assistant coaches.

“It was tough to go in there and tell Dante [Scarnecchia], because you’re having this conversation and you’re like, ‘OK, here we go. I’m about to go in there and tell the offensive line coach — who’s one of the best offensive line coaches in the history of pro football — that we are not going to run the ball in this game.’ You’ve got to try and finesse it.”

Still, not everything about working for Belichick was as stressful as it might have seemed to fans.

McDaniels offered an extensive amount about the Patriots’ setup in both the 2014 season and on more general topics, including Belichick’s role in delegating and facilitating as a head coach.

One point that both McDaniels and Edelman emphasized was the difference in the outside perception of Belichick vs. how people in the Patriots’ building actually viewed working for him.

“I thought our staff meeting room was very comfortable. People think of him as this real hard-to-be-yourself-kind-of-guy, and it was almost the opposite for us,” said McDaniels of his former boss.

“You could kind of be yourself,” he added. “Bill was an assistant for a long time, so he understood we’re not all going to be the same.”

Per McDaniels, Belichick did a “tremendous job” of constantly gathering input from his assistant coaches and analyzing (and then re-analyzing) the team’s roster.

“He was the best listener,” McDaniels said of his former boss. “That’s what the magic for him was, because he gave away the responsibility to do that, and then when we came together, that’s when he listened. He was so intent on gathering what you had that he didn’t have, he didn’t know. He wasn’t in the receiver room. He wasn’t with us in our walkthroughs or anything like that, so he didn’t really have that intimate knowledge, and then he would just take it in and try to help himself make good decisions.”

Edelman concurred, expressing his disapproval about what he viewed as a wider misconception about his former coach.

“It baffles me on this narrative that everyone has that Coach Belichick was not inclusive,” said Edelman.

“He was a guy that would take information from anyone,” the retired wide receiver continued. “I remember he would come up to me during the middle of a game, ‘Hey, what are you seeing?’ And if you gave him the right information, he’d keep coming back to you.”

There was just one rule, per Edelman and McDaniels: Stick to the facts.

“Just don’t make up a story,” Edelman recalled, “because if you do that once, then he’ll never come back to you.”