David Zalubowski / AP

In his short time with the Denver Broncos, head coach Josh McDaniels already is running into trouble as he tries to incorporate the system he learned with the New England Patriots.

Mangini made similar missteps in New York when he lit out of Foxboro back in 2006, irritating players like Pete Kendall, Laveranues Coles, Chris Baker and Chad Pennington. He also micromanaged to the extreme, copying almost verbatim the tight-lipped policies of the Patriots.

"Bill Belichick is the only constant," says our NFL source. "He brings a style of leadership and everyone falls in line. But it's also tied to the success he's had. When you take a coach out of that system and they don't have the same players in their new job, it's a lot different. A team with a guy like Tom Brady in the system who believes in the system and came up in it is going to be stronger because everyone falls in line behind him. That makes the sum greater than the parts.

"It's hard to bring that system somewhere else and have guys who haven't been part of it believe it can be duplicated by someone other than Bill Belichick," he adds. "Take a guy like Josh McDaniels who followed Charlie Weis. That offensive system's pretty tight that Josh stepped into, and the players believe in it already. It wasn't made from scratch. Now he's somewhere trying to make it from scratch."

McDaniels, Crennel, Mangini and Pioli all brought Patriots veterans to their new teams to help players already in the system understand the message being brought.

It's the same thing Belichick did when he went to the Cleveland Browns in 1990 (he brought Pepper Johnson from the Giants, where Belichick was defensive coordinator). It's the same thing Bill Parcells does every time he switches jobs. It's what Pioli did with Cassel and what McDaniels hoped to do.

But being more than a clone of the man you worked for (Belichick) while importing his principles has proven immeasurably hard. It was, to a degree, for Belichick as well. His tenure in Cleveland in the early 90s was somewhat successful, but he had a hard time hitting the right pitch as a person.

But now McDaniels is without the quarterback he didn't want to detach from, and he's up to his neck in trouble before his first mini-camp with the one he inherited.

McDaniels got the job he coveted and the paycheck that went with it. But in trying to bring a slice of New England to the Rockies, he's found – like so many other expatriate Patriots – that you end up paying a high price to do it.

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