FOXBOROUGH — Jerod Mayo couldn’t prove that he’s a smart clock manager on Wednesday. He couldn’t convince Patriots fans that he’s got an answer for fixing the team’s offense and he couldn’t assure anyone that he’d know which buttons to win a close game.
Those tests won’t come until later.
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On Wednesday, when he was introduced as the franchise’s new head coach, the best he could do on Day 1 was to start to shape his image as a first-time head coach and quell a couple of fears. The biggest of those were:
1. Could Mayo, whose entire coaching and playing career came under Bill Belichick, convince people that he’d be different from his former boss and mentor?
2. Could he prove he wasn’t the handpicked coach the Krafts were using to regain control back of their franchises after ceding much of it to Belichick?
Mayo emphasized early on that he’s “not trying to be Bill,” which is a smart point to make but also a pretty obvious one. But he made significant points that were different and at times in direct contrast to the positions held by his former boss.
Most notably, he showed an openness to change the offense, which has grown stagnant without Tom Brady at the controls.
More subtly, while Belichick was old-school in terms of his expectations of his players following his instructions without blowback, Mayo was far more interested in teaching them how they were most open to learning.
“When I first started playing, most of the time Coach would say something and guys would do it. I think with this generation, you have to show them that you care about them before you get into competency as far as Xs and Os are concerned,” he said. “That’s one thing I feel like with all my coaches, they should know the players. They should know their room better than I do. They’re closer. They’re closer to those guys, and they have that day-to-day interaction. But to me, whether we’re talking offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special teams coordinator, all that stuff is under eval, and my number one thing is I want to bring in developers.”
The fact that he listed three coordinators was notable too. While Bill Belichick famously denounced titles and didn’t actually have a defensive coordinator last year, Mayo saw value in them.
“No knock to Coach Belichick who has been a huge mentor to me over the years as a player and as a colleague, what I would say is I believe titles are important outward-looking,” he said. “But as far as in the building, I don’t care what your title is. It’s what value do you bring to the organization. Sometimes I think in business, in sports, people get caught up in titles, but I also understand the other side. If you want to continue to get promoted, people have to know exactly what you do.”
The most obvious thing to notice about Mayo’s relationship with Robert Kraft was the coach continuing to call the owner “Thunder” or “Thunder Cat.” While that’s a little strange bordering on off-putting for sure, it was notable that he wasn’t calling him “Mr. Kraft” the whole time the way far too many employees to to their billionaire bosses.
But more noteworthy was Mayo’s willingness to correct him and even disagree a little. Many first-time coaches wouldn’t have had the gumption to tell the guy who just hired them that he pronounced a name wrong. But Mayo made sure Kraft had his brother Shamont’s name pronounced correctly.
On top of that, after Kraft called himself ‘colorblind’ to downplay Mayo’s race in the hiring process, Mayo could moved onto another question or topic and even brought up his thoughts on race later. But he chose to politely, but firmly contradict his boss.
I do see color because I believe if you don’t see color, you can’t see racism,” he said. “Whatever happens, Black, white, disabled person… I want you to be able to go up to those people and really understand those people. It goes back to whatever it is: Black, white, yellow, it really doesn’t matter, but it does matter, so we can try to fix the problem that we all know we have.”
None of this will matter a bit if his offense doesn’t score points or his teams take too many penalties. If he’s still losing 10 or more games in 2025, his good first impression will be long forgotten.
But for now, he seemed like someone people will want to root for. Mayo came off intelligent and confident. He even dodged some questions he wasn’t ready to answer yet using charm. When was the last time a Patriots coach did that?
It wasn’t hard to picture him speaking in front of a team. A former teammate, who attended the event wasn’t surprised.
“We could go into some corporate event where most of the people in there are 50-and-up white men and he would have everyone talking and joking,” Devin McCourty recalled about their playing days. “I was like, ‘Look at this dude. What does he know to talk about? But no matter what industry, he somehow commands the room and relates to everybody. I think he’s going to have a CEO vibe as a coach. Not just the meathead former football player. When you hear him speak, you think, ‘I would let him run a business. I would let him run my company.’ I’m excited to see him do it.”
Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.
