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FOXBORO — Dante Scarnecchia hasn’t watched any of the Patriots’ padded practices in person.

But the offensive line guru has certainly read about all the difficulties the team, and his old O-line in particular, has had adjusting to the new outside zone running scheme, which is now being paired with a bootleg, play-action passing game.

Relax. It’s not panic time just yet.

Scarnecchia believes Bill Belichick will know after joint practices with the Panthers and Raiders and the team’s three preseason games if the scheme is a worthy pursuit or if the Pats should just keep it in their back pocket.

“I would say this, in fairness to everyone, I just think this is the wrong time to evaluate it. The pads have come on, but they’re not playing real football yet,” Scarnecchia told the Herald on Monday, before the offense once-again looked like a train wreck . “Whenever they play the Giants, we’ll have a better idea where this thing is. Even at that point, it’s not totally fair to say they can’t (do it).

“I think there’s a (three-game) process at hand, where we’ll have a better idea where this thing is going. … What doesn’t look good in training camp early, has no bearing on anything.”

Scarnecchia would know, having won five Super Bowls and coached the Patriots offensive line for 18 years under Belichick. But what if the offense still looks clunky at the end of the month?

In Scar’s view, Belichick will scrap it. Others who have played for Belichick — former linebacker Ted Johnson for one — disagree, believing the head coach will stubbornly stay with the new way. Scarnecchia, however, was firm in his take.

“Bill’s never been one to say, ‘we’re going to run this no matter how it looks,’’’ he said. “He won’t do that. I can remember him saying numerous times, ‘we’re going on to something else’.”

Scarnecchia continued: “But in the meantime, you can’t stick your toe in the water and say this is what it’s going to be. You just gotta make the leap, trust the techniques, and trust the guys involved.

“They’re good enough up front, and I’m sure they’re good enough at tight end, and all the rest of it. You can run behind Trent Brown or Isaiah Wynn.”

As for the notion that the Patriots never switched to a Kyle Shanahan-like scheme because former offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, Scar and former running backs Ivan Fears vetoed it, the former O-line coach denied it unequivocally.

“I can tell you without a doubt, we ran the outside zone play,” said Scarnecchia. “What we didn’t run off that action are the bootlegs off that, which is what you’re seeing from San Francisco, the Rams, all those teams where that came from. And why didn’t we do that?”

The answer is because Tom Brady, as great as he was, wasn’t suited to rolling out and running the bootlegs that the Patriots are now trying to incorporate.

Scarnecchia, McDaniels and Fears didn’t have to squelch the notion. They didn’t have to sway Belichick to stop that in its tracks. It was obvious it wouldn’t work with the personnel involved.

According to the legendary assistant, they actually tried during Brady’s time, even though it didn’t seem like the best option for the GOAT. They practiced the boot actions and ran a few in games. But when Brady was stripped of the ball the first time they tried it, that was pretty much the end of that.

In other words, no pushback was necessary.

Still, the Patriots did utilize the outside zone from time to time, thanks to having a great blocking tight end in Rob Gronkowski. It wasn’t a staple of the offense, but it was certainly in their bag of tricks.

“I’d say we were as good a team at running the outside zone to the open side, the non-tight end side, as anybody in football,” said Scarnecchia. “And we were good at running it to the tight end side when we had a good enough tight end to block it – Rob Gronkowski. So we ran it.

“We ran it out of two-back sets a lot with Sony Michel (in 2018). … We ran toss-crack, we ran outside zone, we ran the gap runs inside, whatever we felt like we could do, we did.”

And that, Scarnecchia suspects, will be the approach in 2022. They’ll go with what works.

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Scarnecchia, who said he was a fan of the outside zone, added when he came out of retirement to coach the offensive line in 2016, many training camp hours were invested into teaching the scheme, sans any boot action.

That didn’t mean they didn’t go through some struggles, but they eventually found the best ways to incorporate the outside zone runs.

“I can only speak for myself, but I never said we couldn’t run it,” he said. “There were times where if you looked at the tight ends, you’d say we’re really not going to have much success with this guy blocking, but it didn’t mean we didn’t run the outside zone to the weak side, where the tackle was the guy doing the heavy lifting.

"We ran that play for years as good as anybody ran it.”

Then the question becomes whether or not Mac Jones is suited for these moving play-action fakes. Scarnecchia was sure the second-year quarterback was more than capable of accomplishing the mission.

“He did it in college, and I think he’s got a skill set,” said Scarnecchia. “Let me put it this way, does he have the same skill set athletically and speed-wise as (Rams quarterback) Matthew Stafford?”

As prospects, Stafford ran a 4.81 in the 40-yard dash, while Jones clocked a 4.72. So to Scar, the answer is yes.

“Mac Jones, I would suspect, is faster than Tom Brady. I’m not saying more athletic, because I think Tom is a fabulous athlete. But I’m sure they’re going into it thinking he can do those things," he said. "You bootleg, you come out, you throw the ball, and you try to get it thrown fast.”

Scarnecchia actually caught the Jets in-stadium practice the other night – he’s in New York visiting his son – and saw Joe Flacco essentially being asked to run the same type of plays as Zach Wilson with the boot actions.

“Ball fake, roll out, throw the ball,” said Scarnecchia. “It ain’t that hard.”

Now for Matt Patricia, who is the offensive line coach by name, and appears to be the de facto offensive coordinator. Is it possible for Patricia to do both jobs and be effective?

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Scarnecchia suspects if Patricia is in fact the play-caller, which is how it looks, assistant offensive line coach Billy Yates will handle the O-line during games. He just doesn’t know that for sure.

“I really don’t know how it’s all going to work. I do think it is a heavy load, but Matt’s a guy that’s used to having heavy loads on Sunday," said Scar. "I think the rub for me, personally, is being able to know enough to set things up in the passing game, whether they’re on either run-pass down-and-distance situations or total pass situations.

"I think it’s a heavy load to ask of someone. I’m not going to refute that and say it’s not. But there are guys who are very, very capable, and have minds that are so strong they can take things on like that. We can all make this judgment on Matt right now, but we don’t know. He’s been a coordinator. So he knows what it takes."

Bottom line, in Scar's view, is if Belichick is entrusting Patricia, he believes he can do the job. That said, when told several members of the media hoped he'd return to fix the offensive line -- even if only to consult or evaluate -- Scar deferred, once again saying there would be more "clarity" with the state of the offense in the next three weeks, given all the joint practices and games on tap.

However it turns out, Scarnecchia likes seeing that the Patriots are trying to evolve, and trying to adapt an offense that could be more successful. With the success of Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan in recent years, many teams are going the copycat route.

"It is a copycat league, and people look at teams that have had success, but you really have to be yourself, too," said Scarnecchia. "The last time we won the Super Bowl, we were a two-back team. Who runs two backs anymore? So what are they left with?

"Outside zones or crack sweeps. And if you go inside, gap runs, maybe you can wham and blast and do things like that if your tight ends can do the heavy lifting. So that’s what you got. There isn’t anything else. So, having said that, you can run outside zones, you can run inside zones, and gap runs. That’s basically it.

"They’ll do whatever they feel their personnel is best-suited to do. I’m anxious to see how it goes. I’d like to see them be successful, of course.”

And in New England, he's hardly alone in that.

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