Dante Scarnecchia Makes Official Decision On NFL Future

Offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia will stay with the New England Patriots next season. He may be 70, but that does not stop him from making plays. The 70-year-old coach is in the midst of his third season with the Patriots. He was retired, but changed his mind.

Dante Scarnecchia began his professional career as special teams and tight end coach in 1982. He joined the Indianapolis colts in 1989-90 and came back to New England. Scarnecchia was given the role of offensive line coach in 1999, and he stayed there.

“Scar’s been awesome,” David Andrews said last week. “He’s a tough coach to play for at times but you know there’s benefits to the way he’s coaching and the way he harps on us is to get our best. He knows what our best is and we still haven’t reached that so we’ll go back to work here this week.”

Patriots respect Scarnecchia

“A lot of credit,” Shaq Mason said. “I mean, day-in and day-out, he’s on us, he’s pushing us. He gets the best out of us, and we all love playing for him, want to play for him. Going out there, it’s more of we’re all playing for each other, but we’re also playing for Dante because we know how much he puts into us. We like giving it back to him.”

“He’s hard on us, he coaches us hard. He loves us as well and I think everybody respects him. He’s been doing this for a long time and I love him, for sure,” Trent Brown said.

The offensive line was great in the playoffs as quarterback Tom Brady was not sacked once.

“I think they’ve performed incredible all year really,” the quarterback said. “We really haven’t had many sacks this year and I think they’ve done such a great job protecting and the run game, I think that speaks for itself. That was just an incredible effort last week and we’re going to need it again because this group is obviously exceptional at that position. The d-line is certainly a great strength of theirs. We’ll be challenged. All those guys will be challenged. We’ll need those guys to play a great game.”

Josh McDaniels also praised Scarnecchia, saying, “Scar is an extremely hard worker. I don’t think anybody works harder than him and we have a lot of guys that work hard here. He is incredibly well-prepared and detailed in his preparation for the opponent and in terms of his preparation for the players that he’s responsible for coaching on a daily basis. He’s extremely thorough. He’s a great communicator and a great teacher of the fundamental aspects of the game of football. Any player would tell you that in order to be good in this league, you’re going to have to be good fundamentally and technically and nobody’s a better teacher that I’ve worked with on that stuff than Dante.

“He’s a great part of our staff. He’s helpful in every way to all the assistant coaches that work with him and he’s a competitive guy that wants to do well in every area that he’s responsible for and does anything and everything he can to help us win. I can’t say enough about the type of person he is, the type of coach he is, what he’s meant to me and the other guys on our staff and me personally throughout my entire career because I was young when I came over here on the offensive side and I’ve learned more from Dante than I can possibly describe. He’s just a great teacher, great person, great, great football coach.”

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