“There’s no real robotic or systematic way to teach the scramble drill, because there’s so many different variations of where people could be on a given pass play,” McDaniels said. “It’s not necessarily simple to say, ‘hey, you’re always going to be in this same spot, so when he scrambles, do this’ because it could be any number of players on any number of plays.

During a conference call on Monday, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels explained what receivers are supposed to do when it looks like a play has broken down.

Danny Amendola improvised the route that became his first touchdown of the season on Thursday night against the Jets, running the scramble drill Patriots receivers work on with the quarterbacks with a great result.


“I think the big key for us is to try to always come back to the ball or come towards the quarterback, the direction that he’s scrambling, because throwing away from where the quarterback’s going is always a difficult proposition. So we try to teach them to be friendly to the quarterback in terms of trying to give him an opportunity to make a throw that he can make. The guys that are deep, certainly if you’re deep and you go deeper, you might get out of his range.

“So the deep guys end up coming a little bit shorter, and in this case, Danny was the short guy and you have two choices – he could either try to get away from your guy in the direction the quarterback is rolling, or in the case of what Danny did, he turned and went in the other direction because he was the short receiver and he turned his route into a deeper play.”

Amendola made a twisting catch at the goal line, turning a third-and-goal from the 19 play into what ended up being the game-winning touchdown.


“It’s not a perfect science but what we try to tell them is you can’t stand there and be covered and you don’t want to throw out of the quarterback’s potential window to throw you the ball so they want to stay active and they want to try to be in the view of the quarterback as best you can and try to create some separation from the defender that’s closest to you,” McDaniels continued. “I thought Danny did a terrific job. we had a couple of guys that did a terrific job on that play.”

One other topic on the Monday call was the Patriots’ record in close games under Bill Belichick and what it is that he teaches the coaching staff and players that New England has been able to have such success in games decided by three points or less, as Thursday’s 27-25 win over New York was.

Belichick, as he generally does, gave credit to the players.

“In the end it just comes down to the players and playing good situational football and making the right decision at the right time,” he said, but added that there are two things that help.

“If you want to go all the way back on it, we’ve had a quarterback who’s very good at that type of thing – clock management, game situations – and we’ve had a good kicker, whether it be Adam (Vinatieri) or Steve (Gostkowski)” he said. “We’ve had good guys in those spots. We won a bunch of games with (Matt) Cassel in 2008, but the quarterback play and the kicking are important. Defensively and special teams, we’ve had our share there too, but the quarterback play and the kicking are important.”


McDaniels said coaching plays a role, but again, it comes back to the men on the field.

“The credit would go to the players and their ability to execute under pressure, because if you’re in a close game, there’s a lot of pressure – situations that you’re in, you need to execute and perform well in, so the players certainly deserve the credit there,” McDaniels said. “I think the best you can do in terms of as a coaching staff is to try to educate your players on potential situations, critical plays that may come up in a given game and try to give them a game plan for how we’re going to win those plays.”