Ernie Adams has been widely considered the mystery man in the New England Patriots organization.
He’s officially listed as the Patriots’ director of football research, but nobody has outright said what he does. Former Patriots executive Scott Pioli joined NBC Sports Boston’s Tom E. Curran and gave further insight on Adams’ role — maybe more insight than the public has ever received.
“He would identify a lot of things,” Pioli said. “I’m not going to get into — that’s part of the Patriots thing, you’ve got cone of silence.”
This is the answer people have received since Adams joined took the position in 2000. Adams spent time as the Patriots’ offensive assistant coach and administrator from 1975-1978 also.
“I will say this: Ernie did a lot and does a lot, and he does it as well as anybody that I’ve ever been around,” Pioli said. “He’s involved in game-planning, he’s involved in personnel. He looks at things from a different perspective where he doesn’t sit in meeting rooms with individual players where he’ll end up getting distracted by certain emotional components and relationships with players. He looks at things with a very clean way.
“He’s a very smart guy. Everyone knows how smart and how brilliant he is, but he’s also an incredible human being and he’s very intuitive. He sees a lot of things. People make him out to be this spy-like thing. He just sees things that are just normal human behaviors and he just has a great mind. He contributes a lot to that organization.”
The Patriots have retained some other long-tenured, brilliant minds by keeping Josh McDaniels and Nick Caserio around. Although Tom Brady isn’t a part of the organization anymore, the Patriots still have Bill Belichick and these fundamental staff members who keep the ship running.
[vertical-gallery id=83231]