Jerod Mayo has his work cut out for him.
He’s inheriting a New England Patriots team that went 4-13 last season. That team has two quarterbacks under contract for 2024 and they’re Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe. They have the third overall pick in a draft with two blue chip passers, an offensive line in need of replacements at both tackle positions and a receiving corps with, maaaaaaybe, one wideout who’d qualify as “average” among NFL starters.
Also, he has to follow the greatest head coach in NFL history.
Mayo will reportedly take the head coaching reins from Bill Belichick, a man who won six Super Bowls and 30 playoff games in 24 seasons before being shown the door this winter. After spending 13 of the last 17 years in New England — the last five as the team’s linebackers coach — team owner Robert Kraft was so convinced he’s the right man for the job that he didn’t even interview anyone else.
A new era in New England.
Congratulations, Head Coach Jerod Mayo! pic.twitter.com/Aj87oTu2S2
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) January 12, 2024
Thus, the man who’ll be the league’s youngest head coach steps into its harshest spotlight. Last year’s 4-13 season and the five-year playoff win drought that preceded it temper expectations a bit, but no matter how he does he’s still the Ryan Minor to Belichick’s Cal Ripken. The Jimmy Johnson to both Tom Landry AND Don Shula.
On top of that, he’s a leaf off the Belichick coaching tree. Too often, this has been the NFL’s gympie gympie, a toxic plant capable only of introducing pain to anyone to come in contact with it. Failures include, hang on:
- Josh McDaniels (20-33 as an NFL head coach)
- Matt Patricia (13-29-1)
- Joe Judge (10-23)
- Romeo Crennel (32-63)
- Eric Mangini (33-47)
- and many more.
The high points are Bill O’Brien (52-48 before ultimately being undone by his general manager, Bill O’Brien) and Brian Daboll, who is 15-18-1 with the New York Giants. That’s bad! The Patriots know this is bad, but opted for continuity and familiarity … even after a four-win season.
New England was so confident in this the team filed a succession plan with the league even before Belichick was on his way out. The team won’t talk to Mike Vrabel or Ben Johnson or, heh, Jim Harbaugh. This is Mayo’s team, all the way.
Here’s the thing. It could work. There are two reasons why Mayo may be the rare fruit from the Belichick tree that isn’t poison.
1
He's lived the Patriot Way (tm)
The rest of the coaches hired away from New England attempted to impart the lessons taught to them by Belichick. But while Belichick had gravitas and the aura of a man who was unwilling to make anyone work harder than he did himself, guys like McDaniels and Patricia failed to command that respect.
They weren’t the architect of the system. They didn’t put their bodies on the line playing within it. They were franchisees, photocopies of diminishing quality.
Mayo, however, knows what it’s like to coach for AND play for Belichick. He spent eight seasons as the sun that provided the gravity around which the rest of an elite defense could orbit. He was 2008’s defensive rookie of the year, a two-time Pro Bowler and a one-time All-Pro before injuries ultimately cut his career short. He was both blue-collar and glamourous, a player at an unsexy position who made himself notable through sheer effort — including a league-best 174 tackles in 2010.
Those are credentials Belichick’s other disciples could never match. We’ve seen his former players find success in ways his other coaches have not. Mike Vrabel turned the Tennessee Titans into a surprise contender, was hung out to dry by his front office and is currently one of the league’s hottest coaching hires. Kevin O’Connell may have only played one season in New England after being drafted by the Patriots in the third round, but his five-year NFL career helped pave the way for modest success leading the Minnesota Vikings.
Hell, Antonio Pierce got the interim head coaching job with the Las Vegas Raiders — a position where he went 5-4 despite starting fourth round rookie Aidan O’Connell at quarterback — after hyping up his troops with stories about the time he famously *beat* Bill Belichick. In a sport where credibility is a massive factor in pushing grown men to their absolute physical limits, experience matters.
Mayo knows the hell his players go through. He knows the hell Belichick put his coaching staff through. His eight years as a player earn him respect. His five seasons as a coach helped him build relationships with the team’s veterans, bonding while thoroughly going through it for a head coach who failed to stick the landing following Tom Brady’s departure.
That gives Mayo a chance to succeed beyond his coaching knowledge. But he’ll be buoyed by the fact …
2
He's in New England, slowly weaning guys off the Patriot Way (tm)
One thing about all Belichick’s coaching tree failures was that none of them took place in Foxborough. They didn’t have players who’d bought in. Efforts to import players who bought in — whether that was Matt Patricia signing Trey Flowers in Detroit, Brian Flores bringing Eric Rowe or Elandon Roberts to Miami, Josh McDaniels with Jabar Gaffney or Daniel Graham or Lonie Paxton or Brandon Bolden or Adam Butler or Jakob Johnson or … well, you get the point — failed to replicate that commitment.
The Patriots, however, understand the Belichick mantra because everyone but 2024’s new free agents and rookie acquisitions have lived through it. Mayo can come in and be Belichick-lite and no one’s going to bat an eye, because that’s what they’re used to. Christian Gonzalez? On board. Matthew Judon? Loves it. Christian Barmore? He can thrive in it.
This doesn’t mean it will be business as usual in Foxborough, however. Mayo can enact change over time, providing a soft transition to whatever comes next. There doesn’t have to be a culture shift because Mayo already is the culture. If he didn’t have his players’ respect, he never would have been the team’s succession plan.
The defense is undoubtedly on board. The offense will require significant change, not due to a lack of commitment or anything but because it’s very, very bad. The Patriots had the NFL’s second-worst offense in 2023. This was ahead of only the New York Jets, a team that willingly started Tim Boyle at quarterback for multiple games.
And that’s fine! That’s why there’s a new head coach!
Mayo will have the resources to punch up his offensive coaching staff and, probably, an honest to goodness general manager capable of clearing the subterranean bar Belichick left behind when it came to drafting wide receivers. He’ll have the third overall pick and the fourth-most salary cap space in the NFL this spring. He’ll have a patient owner who understands the challenge in front of him. Restoring the Patriots will be a daunting task, but Mayo is starting this quest with a ton of built-in advantages.
That doesn’t mean it will be easy. Mayo could just be another poison leaf from a beautiful coaching tree that should never be pruned. But there’s a reason to believe he’s different than the failures that preceded him. The New England Patriots may turn out just fine.
