FOXBOROUGH — The New England Patriots' offensive coordinator situation, at least the play-calling part, already appeared to be settled in the opening weeks of training camp.

Offensive line coach Matt Patricia was the unit's play caller for much of training camp, with Bill Belichick calling plays during a session while quarterbacks coach Joe Judge remained with his position group. Everything was thrown into a loop, though, in the Patriots' preseason-opening loss to the New York Giants on Thursday.

Patricia appeared to be the offensive play caller in the first quarter Thursday night, which was expected. Then, things switched in the second. Judge became the Patriots' offensive play caller, leaving confusion as to who is in charge of New England's offense following the departure of Josh McDaniels.

Belichick shared it was the plan to split offensive play-calling duties on Thursday night.

“We did this game,” Belichick said when asked if he plans to split offensive play-calling duties between Patricia and Judge moving forward. “We did a lot of things in this game that are going to be beneficial in the long run, whether it was on the coaching staff, playing time, players that played and so forth. That's all part of the process.”

Belichick thought there were benefits to the unusual situation, even if it appears clunky from the outside.

“I thought it would be a good opportunity for us to do that,” Belichick said of splitting offensive play-calling duties on Thursday.

Belichick still remained non-committal though on who, if anyone, will be the sole offensive play caller come the regular season.

“Yeah, don't worry about that,” Belichick said when asked if a decision will be made by Week 1 against the Dolphins “We'll work it out.”

“We're going through a process,” Belichick added. “Just like everything else on this team.”

The Patriots' indecisiveness to name a sole offensive play caller led to some unusual moments on the sideline between series on Thursday. Patricia went back and forth to chat with the quarterbacks, offensive linemen, Belichick and Judge whenever the offense wasn't on the field. Judge mostly stuck with the quarterbacks.

During moments when Patricia wasn't with the offensive linemen, veteran center David Andrews huddled the group up and spoke with them. Belichick said it wasn't a “big surprise” that Andrews was doing that considering he's a five-time captain, adding that he wasn't instructed to do that with Patricia rotating around.

“We had good leadership from all our veteran players, a whole lot of different guys out there,” Belichick said. “They were great on the sideline, encouraging the players who were playing and trying to help them out. Coaches were trying to do their same job.

“At the same time the veteran players were very supportive, with great instruction and help. I'll go right down the line. There's a lot of guys that didn't play, and I know I noticed many, many of them if not all of them being part of that. That was kind of their role tonight, and I thought they did a good job with it.”

All in all, Belichick thought the Patriots' communication went well on Thursday, even if they had two play callers on offense.

“I didn't think the communication was a problem,” Belichick said. “We had 12 men on defense on one play, but otherwise the play clock was pretty — we had plenty of time for the most part. We had a couple injuries and a couple substitution issues, but overall, those are more — it wasn't the operation. It was a guy being heard or a substitute because that caused some other substitution things. So, we can clean that up a little bit.

“But I thought we were on the ball quickly, had plenty of time to operate. We had to audible a few times and were able to do that. There's plenty of room for improvement. I'm not saying we're there yet, but getting there.”

The Patriots have the next three days off before hitting the practice field again on Monday. They'll host the Panthers for two joint practices on Tuesday and Wednesday before the two teams face off in their second preseason game on Friday.

Maybe we'll have more clarity on the Patriots' offensive play-calling situation by then.