Another day, another takedown piece behind a paywall on former Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo, who was fired on Sunday after his lone season at the helm for New England.
Thursday’s feature came from Andrew Callahan and Doug Kyed from The Boston Herald, who jointly reported on a piece that detailed a disjointed season for the former first-year head coach - a season that lacked discipline, a clear coaching philosophy, high-caliber support staff, and a culture fully focused on winning.
It also highlighted an organization that appears to be operating more with their gut than a thought-out, long term plan, with reporting that suggests enormous, franchise-altering decisions were made both hastily and in a reactionary manner.
As I said in Wednesday’s breakdown of The Athletic piece - with this reporting being behind a paywall, I don’t want to give away all of Callahan’s and Kyed’s excellent reporting for free. If you care about the local teams, they’re running a promotion right now where you can become a subscriber for one year for $1. I highly recommend it!
With that said, here’s a few sections from the story that I feel best encapsulate the tenuous situation in Foxborough:
Reportedly, there’s a scenario that could have unfolded in December in which Mayo could have kept his job
“Ninety minutes after addressing the team Monday morning, Kraft told reporters he fired Mayo because the Patriots’ performance over the last month of the season had crossed a line. A source familiar with Kraft’s thinking believes had the Patriots flipped one of their December blowout losses to Arizona and later the Chargers, Mayo might have kept his job. Instead, Kraft cut ties, describing the situation as “untenable.”
It took just a few games and weeks to change his mind, and turn the franchise over again.
“I think in the end, a lot of the NFL comes down to the decisions of 80-whatever year old men who don’t really know what’s happening from a football perspective,” one staffer said. “There’s no board to answer to or anything. We’re in a unique business.”
Mayo’s starting running back flub reportedly stems from a miscommunication between offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt and running backs coach Taylor Embree
“In the leadup to kickoff, Mayo had told the national television broadcast and the Patriots’ local radio team Stevenson would be benched after fumbling seven times. According to sources, Mayo had told offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt to sit Stevenson shortly before the game but that order, which was supposed to be relayed to running backs coach Taylor Embree, failed to reach Stevenson.
Mayo covered for Van Pelt later, telling reporters it was a “coach’s decision.” The two maintained a strong working relationship, according to a source, with Van Pelt effectively operating as the head coach of the offense. Van Pelt’s organization skills, sources said, kept the staff together, even though his play-calling rightfully came under fire from fans, media and ownership.
...Van Pelt was the last candidate to interview for Mayo’s offensive coordinator job last January. Other candidates left their meetings unimpressed by the Patriots’ questions and process, per sources. After he was hired, the Patriots were slow to fill out their staff below Van Pelt and leaned heavily on executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf to find new assistants.”
Despite his regular rhetoric on collaboration when speaking with the media, people in the building reportedly feel Mayo was not an adept collaborator
“One team source felt had Mayo become more involved, he may not have been collaborative whatsoever.
“To all of the people saying he needed an experienced staff around him to help him find the right answers and find solutions, I don't know if that would have helped,” the source said. “I don't know if he actually would have listened to what they were gonna say.”
Multiple staffers disagreed with this sentiment, saying Mayo listened as an assistant and head coach.
But the source continued, describing past interactions Mayo had with staff members by saying:
“He would ask anyone, ‘what do you think is the answer here? What do you think of this problem, what can we do to solve this?’ And he would listen to the person give their answer and then say something to the effect of, ‘Well, let me tell you why you’re wrong.’ ”
That’s just three examples of the many reported issues within the Patriots organization during the 2024 season.
Here were some other takeaways from this well-reported piece by Callahan and Kyed:
- More on the Krafts: The Herald is reporting that Robert Kraft met with the team 90 minutes before his press conference on Monday, admitting that he rushed into hiring Mayo in January of last year, and insinuating that he set up both Mayo and the organization to fail during the 2024 season. The report says Kraft went on to tell the players he had learned from his mistake, and would do better leading into his next coaching search.
- It appears that may have just been lip service from Kraft, as the report goes into the Patriots’ current fast-moving hiring process. The Herald suggests that the Krafts have rushed to interview two minority head caching candidates that have no real shot at getting the job, just so they could satisfy the NFL’s “Rooney Rule” and be in the clear to hire Patriots Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Vrabel as their next head coach “as soon as Thursday.” The piece quotes a source within the organization calling this half-hearted fulfillment of the rule by the Krafts “wild, just wild.”
- Mayo reportedly kept talking about “North Stars” with his staff, yet never gave them a clear idea of what those “North Stars” actually were. Mayo’s staff reportedly would ask him questions like, “What are they? Can you share them with us? What’s the goal? What’s the vision?” This was also a phrase Mayo consistently used with the media early in the season.
- People within the building reportedly grew frustrated with both the offensive line and wide receiver situations, with multiple players complaining about the O-line to the Herald throughout 2024. With Patriots executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf telling FOX Sports on Saturday that rookie receivers Ja’Lynn Polk and Javon Baker did not meet expectations on development, sources told the Herald that they disagreed with this assessment, and that other receivers on the roster were just better players, thus garnering more playing time in 2024.
- More on the receivers: The Herald reports that Baker missed bedcheck in London the night before the Patriots’ blowout loss to the Jaguars, leading to the rookie being made inactive. According to the report, Baker didn’t understand why he was being punished, as his intention wasn’t to be late for bedchecks.
- Baker wasn’t the only receiver with tardiness issues, as the Herald reports that former second-round pick Tyquan Thornton was late to the facility two days before being waived by the team, leading to the 24-year-old not practicing that day. Sources told the Herald that Thornton had “checked out mentally after it was clear he wouldn’t play anymore.”
- While “most” on the Patriots staff felt they were “lucky” to upset the Bengals in Week 1, a source told the Herald that they’re not sure if Mayo “watched the tape before taking a victory lap” in the media, and that Mayo was the “happiest guy, bouncing off the walls during the week” after the victory. That same source told the Herald, “After we lost, it was like someone shot his dog,” a far cry from the steady nature of former head coach Bill Belichick.
As we get further removed from the season, the stories of Mayo’s first-and-only season as head coach will continue to trickle out of 1 Patriot Place.
Whether you believe the 38-year-old was put in an impossible situation or not, it’s clear from the reporting that Mayo lost control of the program.
One thing that’s also clear from the reporting:
The Krafts’ mismanagement of their head coaching position is not doing their franchise any favors.