FOXBORO -- Bailey Zappe grinned like a canary-fed feline at the Gillette Stadium podium on Wednesday when he said he'd never heard of "Zappe Fever."
"Nope, I have not," he said.
"You're smiling," Andrew Callahan of the Boston Herald pointed out.
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"I guess I've heard a little bit of it," Zappe relented. "I mean, I haven't dove into any of that. I don't really pay attention to that stuff. I'm just focused on what's going on right now and that's the Browns."
Couldn't keep that secret for long.
Can you blame him? He's only one start into his pro career with a team that takes pride in its ability to hold things close to the vest. He's still getting accustomed to doing business the way business is done in Foxboro.
New England Patriots
It makes sense then, as if to balance out the cosmic scales of confidentiality, that one of the people who has helped the 23-year-old Zappe through the nascent stages of his NFL journey -- along with head coach Bill Belichick, offensive line coach Matt Patricia and quarterbacks coach Joe Judge -- is someone about whom very little is known outside the walls of One Patriot Place.
Evan Rothstein is listed on Patriots.com as having the title of "offensive assistant." He could be spotted in the spring and through the summer consistently around Judge. Though his team bio doesn't list Rothstein as having had any quarterback coaching experience, he appeared to be sharing tips with all Patriots passers -- particularly Belichick's rookie fourth-round pick out of Western Kentucky.
Like former Patriots staffers Bo Hardegree and Jerry Schuplinski -- both now with Josh McDaniels in Las Vegas -- once upon a time, Rothstein appeared to have the job of getting a young quarterback settled into the system. He looked like an assistant quarterbacks coach.
There was Judge, coaching techniques and footwork, often wearing a hooded sweatshirt under the August sun. And there was Rothstein, who from afar appeared to be about half Judge's size, never far behind.
"I’ve picked Evan’s brain a lot, too," Zappe said. "He’s been around the game of football, especially NFL, for a while. That’s somebody that I go to for a lot of things, such as Joe Judge, [Matt Patricia] and Coach Belichick. He’s another guy that I like going to and picking his brain, asking him questions on certain things. He always has great feedback."
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Rothstein came to the Patriots last year and took the nebulous title of "research and analysis/coaching." Prior to that, he worked with Patricia during his final few seasons of what was ultimately the better part of a decade spent in Detroit. From 2012-20 he was with the Lions, taking gigs that included special teams quality control, special projects coach, offensive assistant/research and analysis, and head coach assistant/research and analysis.
"Matty P's right-hand man," was how Matt Cassel remembered Rothstein. Cassel backed up quarterback Matthew Stafford in Detroit in 2018.
"I remember thinking he was part of the analytics operation," Cassel added, "but most of my interactions with him had to do with his work with the scout team. He was very involved there, telling us about different things that the opponent would be doing on the offensive side in a given week. Motions, the cadence, if there was an offensive lineman who shifted his weight a certain way or a detail about hand placement, if there was a center who crouched down a little more before the ball was snapped... It was a lot of interesting stuff like that."
Former Patriots safety Duron Harmon, who played for the Lions in 2020, remembered Rothstein similarly.
"He has his meetings each week when we talk about tendencies, signals, cadences, just all the little nuances of the game that a lot of people might overlook," Harmon told the Detroit Free Press. "He’s that guy who’s pointing it out for us so that we can have a good tip or a good tendency that we can hold our hat on."
"In our scout-team meetings, he wanted us to give the most realistic look for our defense," Cassel said. "He'd come to our room and tell us how to run particular plays. He was really specific on stuff like cadence, certain formations, offset backs, things like that.
"I was definitely in those meetings where it was, 'What are you looking for us to do?' Some teams would major in the no-huddle and so we had to figure out how to push the tempo to get the defense prepared to get lined up. It was trying to be as realistic to what they'd see in the game as possible, and I think it was a valuable resource."
But there's more to Rothstein's job in New England, even if not everyone in the locker room is incredibly familiar with the details involved. If his role sounds similar to the one held by former football research director Ernie Adams, that's because it is.
"Evan's done some of the things that Ernie did," Belichick said earlier this month, "He has a very good understanding of situational football and the organization of various things that we need to do as a staff. He's been a good addition and helped a lot of us in a lot of different ways. He wears a lot of hats."
Rothstein is typically high above the field at the press-box level on game days. Does he have a direct line to Belichick the way Adams once did?
"I would hear," Cassel said, "Bill say to Ernie, 'Hey, what are we thinking here?' It might be a situational thing. 'Hey, what are the numbers telling us? Do we have enough time to do this or that or the other?' I know Ernie had a big say in all that."
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That much is unclear as it relates to Rothstein. But having a similar line to Patricia was something players believed Rothstein had in Detroit.
Rothstein was trusted enough by more than just Patricia to take on one of the most important in-game coaching responsibilities for the team in an emergency situation in 2020.
After Patricia was fired, with Darrell Bevell as interim head coach, COVID protocols forced the Lions to go without their defensive coordinator and three more defensive assistants before taking on Tom Brady and the Bucs. Rothstein had never run a position group on the defensive side before, but Bevell promoted him to defensive play-caller for the week.
"He’s probably our most knowledgeable — not probably, is our most knowledgeable in terms of our defense, what we’re doing really all the way across the board," Bevell said before that game. "He is very involved in game day already, so he’s been in tough situations on game day, helping with information and communication, so we felt like he has the most experience and will be able to get that done at a high level for us."
Rothstein is a wearer of many hats, but the Patriots shouldn't need him on the defensive play-calling front this season. He has enough on his plate as it is. While we may not know the full details of what's on that particular plate from day to day, judging by how Zappe handled nearly two full games behind center, he's done something right.