It’s been a tough 24 hours for Patriots fans.

With Tom Brady reportedly retiring, Pats fans received more bad news on Sunday when the Raiders announced the hiring of Dave Ziegler as the new general manager. Josh McDaniels is also expected to follow Zeigler and become the new head coach for Vegas. Both losses are massive for the Patriots, creating two huge voids the team now needs to fill before draft prep really starts in the next couple weeks, if it hasn’t hit high gear already.

While it was widely assumed that Bill Belichick is still the GM and made all of New England’s draft picks last year, Ziegler was obviously heavily involved in arguably the team’s best draft in years. Ziegler has been in the league for 12 years, taking over as New England’s director of player personnel this past season and serving as the assistant director in 2020. For those of us worried about Belichick’s drafting abilities over the last decade or so, losing Ziegler is worrisome. Now, Eliot Wolf is most likely next in line for the position and has been around the team for the last two years, but is he reliable? His resumé would say he is considering it has 18 years of experience on it. Wolf began working for the Packers in 2004, working his way up and eventually becoming director of player personnel in 2015. Not a shabby job there.

Wolf eventually became the Browns assistant GM (2018-2019) before joining the Pats’ staff as a front office consultant in 2020. If he does end up as the new GM, fixing the linebacker room, finding a legit No. 1 receiver and probably another corner are going to be his first responsibilities.

As for the loss of McDaniels, it can’t be overstated. McDaniels has been the one constant – besides Tom Brady – on offense for the Patriots seemingly forever. The biggest blow is the fact that Mac Jones will now be working with a second coordinator in two years. Every failed quarterback career often has a “yeah, but he played for X amount of OC’s” right after it, so hopefully this isn’t going to turn into that for Jones.

The obvious replacement is most likely Bill O’Brien. O’Brien is not only familiar with the Patriots and how the entire operation runs, but he does have some familiarity with Jones as well despite the two never actually working together at Alabama. The ability for Jones and the receivers to hit the ground running this offseason is critical. There could be a few other candidates like Nick Caley or Chad O’Shea, so the familiarity would be there with them as well, but it’s imperative the next guy has strong communication with Jones. Otherwise, it’ll be a start from square one in training camp this year if Bill makes an outside the organization hire as Josh’s replacement.

With that being said, there is an exception. I wouldn’t hate the idea of Sean Payton taking over if Bill was going to go outside the box, but the Patriots would need to compensate the Saints. The most important thing McDaniels did here was take the offense completely off of Bill’s plate. It’s been Josh’s offense and no one else’s. Now, whoever Belichick hires has to have that same level of trust with the head coach. If that isn’t there and Belichick ends up having to take time away from the defense to make sure the offense is running smoothly, it’s only going to hurt the team. Payton would be someone Bill trusted and I genuinely believe he’d take a lesser role as an OC to be able to work with his friend Bill as the two hit the back nine of their careers.

Whatever happens in the next few days and weeks as the Patriots continue to try and rebuild on the fly, the loss of Ziegler and more so McDaniels will be felt for a while. McDaniels has been a buffer for players between Bill, a teacher, a mentor and god only knows what else for offensive players for nearly two decades (we’ll leave those stints in Denver and St. Louis out of this for now) and no one man will be able to fill his shoes right away. It’s a bit odd that McDaniels would wait this long to jump back into a head coaching role and tie his success to someone like Mark Davis, but it’ll be a sneaky great move from the Raiders if they can get revenge on Belichick for the Tuck Rule 22 years later by taking away what might have been the future of the Patriots once Bill decided to walk away.

Josh McDaniels should always be remembered as one of the more under appreciated pieces to this dynasty while Ziegler may end up being the GM that got away if Belichick can’t replenish this roster and make it more competitive than 10-8 in 2022.