Inside the unusual, rapid rise of Zak Kuhr, the Patriots’ new defensive play-caller

His coming out party was last Sunday night Primetime in Buffalo A battle with the NFL s last undefeated organization and the league s reigning MVP By beating Josh Allen head-to-head in a thriller he informed his arrival That is of discipline if you bothered to Google his name afterward Not Drake Maye Try Zak Kuhr Kuhr the Patriots inside linebackers coach has called defensive plays for about a month now after defensive coordinator Terrell Williams took a biological leave His early-season rise has almost matched Maye s Thanks to Kuhr s clever championship plan the Patriots held the Bills to their lowest point total in more than a calendar year The next day Buffalo offensive coordinator Joe Brady admitted the Pats wrinkles caused his offense to stall early The last time the Bills stalled like that scoring points or fewer in a battle Allen played start to finish there s a chance Brady didn t know Kuhr s name A lifelong offensive coach in the college ranks Kuhr converted to the defensive side upon joining Vrabel s Titans staff in Three years later he was still working as a low-level assistant in Tennessee Kuhr served as the Titans assistant inside linebackers coach before he fled to New York for another bottom-of-the-totem-pole job with the Giants after Vrabel was fired in Jan Once Vrabel took over in New England last January Kuhr followed and in the end received his promotion Then in the spring when Williams took his first leave for an unspecified therapeutic situation Kuhr got another one interim defensive coordinator It just felt like Zak has great knowledge of what we ve done here in the past with me this system and with Terrell Vrabel explained last May A coordinator promotion after just five years coaching defense Yes And it s taken less than five weeks to see why In Kuhr s play-calling debut at Miami the Patriots got scorched and allowed scores on half of their defensive series The next week that percentage dropped to against Pittsburgh excluding kneeldowns then versus Carolina In the end came the trip to Buffalo a measuring-stick match by the Patriots own admission What followed was the largest regular-season primetime upset in franchise history backboned by a defensive performance that exhibited the league what s been evident to Foxboro insiders for weeks now Just take it from one of Kuhr s colleagues Patriots assistant Mike Smith a -year league veteran who s played in and coached particular of the best defenses of the NFL s modern era Kuhr s doing one hell of a job The best defense is Back in Week as the Patriots shook off a minimal cobwebs during a slow start against Carolina Kuhr developed a curious play-calling pattern The Panthers were down several of their best pass-catchers that day from secondary receivers to their top tight end Starting running back Chuba Hubbard a hard-nosed contestant with a knack for emerging tackles represented Carolina s surest path to an upset Ride Hubbard control the clock and get lucky late felt like the Panthers one and only event plan Except Kuhr called for his defense to play Cover on first downs Two safeties dropped deep again and again while inside linebacker Robert Spillane bailed with them Instead of defenders stepping forward to meet the run Kuhr had them retreating into coverage And he was right Carolina repeatedly dialed up deep play-action passes on first down hoping to manufacture big plays via surprise only to settle for harmless checkdowns The Patriots weren t fooled because Kuhr wasn t He put himself in the mind of the Panthers coaching staff as a one-time offensive play-caller himself and knew what to expect Any time when it comes to calling plays at least for me in general Kuhr recounted the Herald I do go back to an offensive coordinator s mindset Patriots inside linebacker coach Zak Kuhr C as the Patriots take practice at Gillette Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill Boston Herald Early in his career Kuhr worked as an offense coordinator at the high school and college levels He accepted his first coaching gig as a high school participant Within a insufficient years Kuhr became a low-level college coach and at last a coaching intern at Ohio State in There he first crossed paths with Vrabel but perhaps more importantly he met Patriots vice president of football strategy and operations John Stretch Streicher A year after he left Ohio State Kuhr reunited with Streicher as colleagues and roommates at James Madison where he coached running backs in He credits Streicher for eventually getting him to the NFL I maybe wouldn t be here without Stretch Kuhr explained this spring In Kuhr became the co-offensive coordinator at Texas State his third school in as a multitude of years He connected with players he hardly knew by applying basic lessons from previous stops like using participant feedback to inform his play-calling and using meetings as a place to bond as well as coach Nowadays knowing the best offensive coaches learn defensive rules so they can force opponents to break them Kuhr allows Patriots players to tweak their rules in practice to get ahead of problematic plays on Sunday A collaborative approach comes naturally to Kuhr whom Patriots veterans describe as high-energy down-to-earth and caring He does a good job of making the player-coach relationship non-existent He s just a homie revealed Patriots linebacker Marte Mapu Just trying to keep it casual that way without compromising the part where we have to have fundamentals and a standard The non-negotiables Why Drake Maye and the Patriots are on upset alert at New Orleans This file is auto-generated function d l use strict l querySelector d addEventListener undefined typeof URL d wp d wp d wp receiveEmbedMessage d wp receiveEmbedMessage function e var t e content if t t secret t message t value a-zA-Z - test t secret for var s r n a l querySelectorAll 'iframe data-secret ' t secret ' ' o l querySelectorAll 'blockquote data-secret ' t secret ' ' c new RegExp https i i i