The Patriots have begun their search for their next de facto general manager. They’ve also had their first denial.
According to Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network, Cincinnati Bengals senior personnel executive Trey Brown has declined to interview for the Patriots job.
Brown, 39, has ties to Jerod Mayo and the Patriots. He was a scouting assistant in New England in 2010 and an area scout for the Patriots in 2011 and 2012, overlapping with the new Patriots head coach.
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Brown left New England to work in Philadelphia where he was an area scout (2013-14), assistant director of college scouting (2015) and the Eagles director of college scouting (2016-18). In 2019, he left to work as the executive vice president of football operations for the AAF’s Birmingham Iron in 2019 and then as the director of player personnel for the XFL’s St. Louis BattleHawks in 2020.
Brown returned to the NFL with the Bengals in 2021 as a scout. In 2022, he was promoted to senior personnel executive.
A source told MassLive on Monday that the Patriots have begun their search process for their next de facto general manager. It’s unknown what title the person hired will hold, but he’ll be running the front office in New England.
There is an expectation inside Gillette Stadium and among other NFL teams that Patriots will ultimately hire Eliot Wolf, who’s been doing the job this offseason. Still, the Patriots have to begin an official search process to adhere to NFL rules before hiring anyone, even Wolf.
That could be the reason why someone like Brown, who will be a GM candidate next offseason, turned the Patriots down.
