(Lindsey Wasson – The Associated Press)
According to ESPN’s Mike Reiss, the Patriots are rumored to be hiring former Rams assistant and Seahawks offensive line coach Andy Dickerson as their new offensive line coach.
The 42-year old Dickerson is familiar with the area. He played offensive line at Tufts University from 1999-2002. He worked for the Patriots in the operations department from 2004-05.
From 2012-2020, Dickerson was the Rams assistant offensive line coach. After the 2020 season, he left for Seattle along with Shane Waldron who became the Seahawks offensive coordinator.
With Pete Carroll not returning to the Seahawks, both Waldron and Dickerson became available. Waldron ended up Chicago. Dickerson is waiting to get hired.
If the Patriots do hire Dickerson, they will be pairing him up with newly hired offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt. Van Pelt has coached under Mike McCarthy in Green Bay and Kevin Stefanski in Cleveland. Both McCarthy and Stefanski run a more traditional West Coast offense based on multiple formations and personnel groupings. Dickerson has coached under Sean McVay so he is more well versed in the modern West Coast offense that utilizes more motion and shifting.
Van Pelt and Dickerson along with Ben McAdoo who is expected to be hired in a senior offensive assistant role, would be put in charge of blending the two philosophies and putting an offense together that fits what head coach Jerod Mayo wants to do.
Of course, there are a lot of moving parts to all this but the Patriots offensive philosophy is starting to come into focus. They are going away from what they did under Bill Belichick and are going to be a West Coast offense team. It is a stark difference from what we are accustomed to seeing the past 24 years.
Dickerson will have a lot of work to do. Both Trent Brown and Michael Onwenu are free agents and not expected to be back. While there is plenty of depth on the interior offensive line, the Patriots need to figure who will play tackle for them. The entire unit will be learning a new offense and Dickerson will need to get them up to speed.
The whole process will be fascinating to watch play out in the coming weeks and months.