- 1/12/2024
The Patriots wasted no time in finding Bill Belichick successor, promoting Jerod Mayo to Head Coach role less than 24 hours after Belichick's departure. John Zannis and Taylor Kyles give their immediate thoughts on the hire and what to expect from Mayo's Patriots.
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00:00 I'm not gonna call it a bombshell.
00:02 What was expected, I guess how quickly it happened,
00:06 I thought they'd try to give it time
00:10 because they wanted to give Bill his moment and let him breathe.
00:14 And knowing that Mayo was going to be the successor, there's really no rush to announce it.
00:18 But everyone kind of had it yesterday once it was reported and learned that
00:24 the Patriots had already put language in place in their contract with Mayo
00:30 and filed it with the league to let them know that he was part of the succession plan
00:35 and basically had already been pre-selected as the next head coach of the organization.
00:39 And that was submitted to the league and that allows them to circumvent Rooney rule practices
00:45 and just kind of jump right to the, you know, have Mayo jump right to the head of the line.
00:50 The league had okayed it. Now, theoretically, Taylor, they could have still said no
00:56 and gone in another direction, but that would have been an issue between Mayo and the Patriots.
01:01 The league, as far as they were concerned, the Patriots could have gone in either direction.
01:06 It's very clear Kraft has been set on this for a long time.
01:10 And I'm guessing he didn't think that hard about it.
01:14 Even when Mike Brable's name came up, which was unexpected, maybe he took pause.
01:18 But I think this has been the path. It got here sooner than people expected.
01:24 And now it's here. So I'm not going to call you a flip-flopper per se,
01:28 but I'm going to say you were team Mayo. You might have jumped out for a second or two,
01:34 but you like Mayo and you like this higher.
01:39 And one thing, I was never like anti-Mayo. My only real hesitation, one,
01:43 like when the Brable news came out, again, I think it was valid for there to be some level of,
01:47 hmm, that's intriguing. And then on top of it, when it was reported that Adam Peters and him might have been,
01:53 it wasn't officially a package deal, but they were being connected in reports.
01:57 So my brain kind of went to, okay, well, then you have a guy with experience and a proven track record,
02:02 and he may have a general manager coming with him. That's pretty exciting.
02:05 But the entire time my thinking was that if the Krafts think Mayo's ready,
02:09 the biggest thing is that he is an experience and there's going to be, as we talked about yesterday,
02:13 no one's going to be right. Because we don't know until he actually coaches some games and we see how the team responds,
02:19 yada, yada, yada. But, you know,
02:21 I swung back to the Mayo side because that was my whole worry was maybe the Krafts don't think it's quite his time yet.
02:27 Maybe he needs another couple of years of cooking. But if the language was in his contract,
02:32 that they were like, yeah, no, as soon as Bill's done, you're our guy.
02:35 I looked up the report from Ian Rappaport. This only happened three other times where it was put in language.
02:40 So you could bypass the Rooney rule and have a coach be the successor.
02:43 It happened with the Ravens GM Eric DaCosta, the Colts did it with Jim Caldwell, and the Seahawks did it with Jim Mora.
02:49 So, I mean, not something that happens very often, clearly shows a lot of faith in Mayo.
02:55 The locker room absolutely loves him. Like, you know,
02:58 there was some worry where, again, I keep emphasizing that I know people,
03:02 some people want a clean break from Bill Belichick, but I think on the defensive side,
03:06 that's not really what you want. You want continuity because that was the side that was keeping them in games and made them competitive.
03:11 Now you have someone that was building the game plans, running the meetings,
03:15 and someone that players have a massive amount of respect for.
03:18 There's obviously a ton of other vacancies that they're going to have to fill and other moves that need to be made.
03:22 But it was a pretty, you know, it's pretty obvious that they have a ton of faith in Mayo,
03:26 that they didn't even let the Bill Belichick, you know, have more than a day.
03:31 He had his day yesterday, but again, Kraft said he was going to move quickly.
03:34 And now we've got the news and I'm pretty fired up. I think this is really exciting.
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03:55 Well, so, and again, I'm going to go back to what I always, I have my two thoughts.
04:01 I believe Mayo has the players in his corner. I don't think that's, I think everyone who's ever played with him,
04:11 I think anyone who's played under him recognizes kind of his, what he brings and they like him.
04:17 And I think they'll play for him. We talked about how daunting it is,
04:21 but I have no problem hiring an assistant and having somebody say, all right, go for it, do your thing.
04:25 So it's not that he's inexperienced. I don't mind inexperience.
04:29 It's like I said, is everything he's learned from coaching, he's learned from Bill.
04:34 That doesn't mean he's going to do it that way. It's very possible.
04:36 What you learned is what you learned to not do. Like I see this and there's plenty of people in that position.
04:42 You learn under a boss or a supervisor. You take everything that's good from it,
04:46 but you have your own ideas and your own thoughts. And I'm guessing Mayo is going to be one of that guy,
04:51 one of those guys. So I'm not prepared to say, I had said, flush everything.
04:56 My fear is allegiances, whatever's left over here.
04:59 I want a guy to come in with a new staff and a new perspective, a new energy.
05:04 I didn't want a lot of carry over because I just think everything was,
05:09 the well had been poisoned for several years, whether in fighting people looking at each other and look,
05:15 there's a bunch of guys who are going to leave anyway. And Mayo is going to bring in his guys.
05:19 I didn't want that much carry over because I don't want it to feel like half, you know, half a makeover.
05:27 I really did think once you're gone from Belichick, you got to go something new.
05:31 Mayo may be that new thing. I'm curious what he does with the staff.
05:35 My number one takeaway is, and you and I have talked about this, this is less important than the next move,
05:41 which is who's going to be. So it's not lost in it.
05:45 There's plenty of people in the comments who say this and a lot of people understand it.
05:48 But who to replace? It's so hard when you're replacing one person with two people.
05:54 And who does the other part of Belichick's job is what all of us will concede is the issue with Bill.
06:04 That the players, the players, Bill, I mean, we've said it so many times for so many years, it's boring saying it again.
06:12 But Bill the GM screwed Bill the coach. We all believe Bill can still game plan, strategize, prepare a team like no other.
06:20 It was evidence that he had not lost the room. So Bill's curmudgeonly ways and no fun sort of atmosphere,
06:27 guys still played for him because the respect was always there.
06:30 I do believe that people always thought that to the last day, what Bill is doing is giving us the best chance to win.
06:39 Even when he was super conservative with the offense and this and that, it's what he believes we have.
06:44 And I think anything that Bill didn't do with the offense or anything conservative that they were doing is really more a reflection of,
06:50 we know we're bad, so we just got to not turn the ball over and see if our defense can keep us in this game, see if we can sneak out a win.
06:57 He knew it. That's how he coached all year. They still showed up for him.
07:00 But that next hire is a big, big, big deal. And I wonder, do you think they have it set already, Taylor?
07:06 I think there's a lot of options. So one, you know, reports have really come out, especially I believe it was Albert Brewer reported yesterday,
07:13 how, and we already knew this, but it was reiterated that Bill Belichick was overruling a lot of his scouts who were building relationships on the road
07:21 and really liked certain players, A.J. Brown and Thibaut obviously come to mind because they apparently were really close.
07:27 So in their visits, they were comfortable and joking around with each other.
07:30 And Bill thought that that was a problem and that they weren't taking it seriously.
07:34 Instead, Nikhil Harry had a great interview and obviously he, Belichick had a relationship with Herm Edwards and then was just like,
07:40 I don't really care about all the work that you guys have put in on the roads, but time away from your families, yada, yada, yada.
07:45 I'm going to take my guy and see how that worked out.
07:47 So we really don't know how effective their current front office who's left could be without him.
07:53 So we don't know if it means that Matt Groh gets a promotion.
07:55 We don't know if they bring back Dave Ziegler, who obviously didn't work out with the Raiders,
07:59 but it was also reported that he didn't work out because Josh McDaniels was overruling him, even though Ziegler brought McDaniels to Vegas, which is pretty wild.
08:06 You also got Elliot Wolfe. He could get a promotion within the building.
08:09 But one person, if Robert Kraft wants to go to Gerard Mayo and say, I want you to bring in someone who you have a close relationship with,
08:15 that you can grow with and maybe start a new regime with, that could be Trey Brown.
08:21 So Trey Brown, he spent a few years with the team. I'll pull up his resume right now.
08:25 I tweeted it just so I'm not saying anything wrong. Yes.
08:29 So he has a relationship with Mayo. One, that's pretty big.
08:32 So that was kind of like what I was talking about with Vrabel and Adam Peters, how they had a relationship.
08:36 The current version would be Mayo and Trey Brown.
08:38 So Trey Brown was a scouting assistant and area scout for the Patriots from 2010 to 2012.
08:43 Most recently, he was the senior personnel executive for the Bengals for a few years.
08:47 And he also rose up the ranks in Philly's front office from 2013 to 2018.
08:52 Obviously, when it around the time they beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl.
08:56 So he's a guy who has, you know, you talk about you want to get fresh eyes in the building.
08:59 That's someone who won, also has a history of drafting receivers, putting a lot of stock into them and drafting them well.
09:05 Tee Higgins, Jamar Chase, yada, yada, yada.
09:07 And he also has success with the Eagles, who also had success, I mean, across the board.
09:12 And he's with the Bengal. I'm sorry. And he was with the Patriots.
09:15 So championship ties. He's got his New England, you know, Mayo connections, but he also worked elsewhere.
09:21 So I really do think that they're in a good position where, again, they can either promote internally and keep that continuity of craft.
09:28 Thinks that there were good decisions that could have been made in the past that weren't because of Bill Belichick's influence.
09:33 Or, again, if they want to ask Mayo who he wants to grow with and he says, I have a relationship with this guy.
09:38 He's got outside experience. I'd like to see what he can bring to the table.
09:41 They can go with Trey Brown. So it's not as daunting a task as I think it might seem when you first think about it,
09:47 because there's so many things that need to be filled and there's still question marks with the offense.
09:51 You know, this isn't a done deal, but they already have their head coach and a lot of teams are still interviewing people.
09:56 Vrabel hasn't even taken an interview yet. So I think they're in a good spot and they have plenty of options that are, you know,
10:02 that fit the craft mold where they like to keep things in-house or have some sense of continuity.
10:07 Fair enough. But I guess ultimately, how do you know that these guys can do it?
10:13 It's relationships are one thing. This is the leap of faith that like is very scary, right?
10:20 Because the relationships, I think, are big because like just look at in New York where, you know,
10:25 Brian Dable doesn't get along with his eye. That was more of his defensive coordinator.
10:29 But when you have tensions where the head coach doesn't really get along with the general manager, that's where things start to split.
10:34 But the good organizations like the 49ers, like the Chiefs, the head coach and the general manager work in tandem.
10:40 And obviously a lot of these are projections because these guys haven't been general managers yet.
10:45 So there's going to be speculation, but we don't know. We truly don't. We're just going to have to, you know, see what their resumes are.
10:52 You can either have confidence based on those or you can have your questions. Those are both valid.
10:57 And then we're just going to have to see how they end up executing. So, I mean, there's going to be some level of I don't really know what can happen,
11:02 especially when you talk about guys in the Patriots front office, because Belichick had an iron grip on everything that happened and was able to tell people,
11:09 I don't really care what you think.
11:10 Yeah. And look, I think that's going to be the thing. And like so much of this is how it's reported.
11:17 And, you know, we don't know, but you're going to trust some people, you know, and I'm sure it's not the entire picture,
11:25 but the general vibe around Bill was that it's not lack of collaboration.
11:31 It was, as you said, like the final say is the final say.
11:36 And that's how bosses operate. Give me options. I'm going to make the pick.
11:40 But as you said in the Nakeel Harry situation, you got to kind of either respect or defer, you know, at times to the people who have put in the work. Right.
11:53 You know, so like if you're running stride for stride with the people out there and you're doing close to the same amount of work or you're studying and scrutinizing all of this,
12:03 then maybe, yeah, look, hey, I've looked at all of this stuff, too. My take is slightly different.
12:08 I think Harry's better than Debo, but it's not. It's based on small things and whims and conversations.
12:15 The worst part is, well, I talked to another guy who I trust more than you, who coached him or knew him, and I'm taking his word over yours.
12:23 And that's not a great way to develop a staff and people who want to go out there and do it.
12:28 So you can't really do that stuff, you know, Taylor. I think that that that's the kind of thing where, you know, you've seen the brain drain in terms of coaches and other front office staff.
12:40 And I think there is a general vibe that people who worked under here weren't allowed to kind of express themselves or grow or, you know, taken seriously.
12:51 And it was all kind of not under the iron fist. And again, almost all of this is what it's exactly the same thing as we talked about, where the things that made him great,
13:01 attention to detail, control over everything, having his hands in all of it and this and that, which made him this coaching monster that was, you know,
13:10 able to do everything that he did during the course of these 20 or so years, ends up being the downfall when things start going wrong, because you're just you're used to being right.
13:20 He was he was he's always done this. Who knows? Maybe he slowed. Maybe his fastball is slow.
13:26 Maybe because the team has been so bad, his attention to his attention to what happens,
13:31 scheming and game planning to not embarrass themselves on the field has detracted so much from his ability to even look around and see like,
13:39 you think he's watched a college game this year? Would he have been ready to draft?
13:43 Like, no, it's just being an NFL head coach is that probably one of the most time consuming jobs in America.
13:51 I don't know how you do a dual role. You know, you really have to be.
13:55 I would imagine, Taylor, 80 to 90 percent. You've got to.
13:59 This is the classic case of hire the people you trust and do what they tell you to do.
14:03 You can't just be coming in and saying, nah, you can't do it.
14:07 It's you if you're coming from an uninformed place in that. And it's I think that that's tough.
14:14 Yeah. And NBC Sports Boston's Phil Perry asked Bill about this during the season.
14:18 He was like, how much involvement do you have in personnel during the season?
14:21 And, you know, Bill was saying the right things where he's like, I'm really not involved because I'm a head coach.
14:26 That takes up most of my time. If they ask me questions, I get my feedback.
14:30 But he really made it seem like he was not involved in the personnel department during the season,
14:35 which makes it even more glaring when there's people who spend all of that time doing the work and the time after that,
14:41 when you start getting involved and in your limited, obviously, you know, Bill Belichick, limited perspective.
14:46 It's kind of a low to take that. But I mean, he doesn't spend as much time as the scouts do.
14:51 So that made it even more jarring when Belichick himself is admitting that I am not spending a ton of time on the personnel side,
14:58 outside of like meetings and getting updates and all that.
15:01 But you're saying, no, I don't really value your opinion. It's like, so why are you hiring these people?
15:07 What's the point? Why are they taking on one of the hardest jobs where you're?
15:12 I've said this so many times when I cannot emphasize enough, you're away from your family.
15:16 You're constantly traveling. It's a very difficult, strenuous job to be a road scout.
15:22 And then they put in all this work for years where you're building up portfolios on all these players and getting to know them and building relationships.
15:29 And then it's all for naught. So that's another thing with Mayo that I'm excited about is you finally have someone I feel like who will show respect.
15:37 And, you know, he's talked about his I'll actually read something where I asked him a couple of weeks ago about his background in business and being outside of football.
15:45 What kind of perspective that gives him. And he mentioned he feels like he's ready.
15:49 He said he could talk to men, women, old, young, white, black. It doesn't matter.
15:52 And hopefully develop those people into upstanding citizens and help them evolve. I feel like my calling is to develop.
15:58 So he understands the value in people. And it's not all about him.
16:02 And especially as a former player, I think he'll have a better appreciation for one, how to treat people.
16:07 The fact that it's not like Belichick where you start icing people out and you have this really small circle of people you trust.
16:12 But then you leave others out and start making them feel like they're not important.
16:16 I think that's a lot of the things that started to fray the organization, especially it's fine when everything works, because you're like, how am I going to say no to a guy who just won three Super Bowls in four years?
16:24 But it's different when the best quarterback in history leaves and then the success just poof, it's gone.
16:30 And you don't have as many explanations in the Bill Belichick luster kind of goes away a bit.
16:35 So it's another reason why this hiring is really exciting, because I think the way Mayo treats people and handles and carries himself will be a significant difference.
16:43 And I think attract people who are in the building and are doing well to want to stay and develop under him rather than maybe wanting to go elsewhere because they know that there's a limit on how high they can get.
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