A Report Details The Insane Dysfunction of Jerod Mayo's Year as Coach, Including How He Tried to Demote Steve Belichick
Since the dawn of time, mankind has measured time by the cycles of the sun, the moon, the stars and comets. Centuries ago, we developed complex time pieces, first mechanical and then digital. Today, we can even more precisely measure the passage of time by how long it takes for anonymous sources to start trashing an NFL coach after he's been fired. When three days have passed, you can guarantee those reports are going to start dropping. Just to squeeze every drop of out of this metaphor, it's like clockwork.
And so it is we woke up this morning to this one, from The Athletic:
To steal a line from Ned Ryerson, it's a doo-oozy. Let's not bury the lede, and begin where the headline of this blog takes us, then move on from there:
Even though Steve Belichick, Bill’s son, had been the Patriots’ defensive play caller in recent years while they routinely boasted top-10 units, Mayo didn’t offer him the chance to continue calling plays, according to a team source, opting instead for young defensive line coach DeMarcus Covington. Mayo offered Steve a lesser role, but the younger Belichick declined and left to become the defensive coordinator at the University of Washington.
As I detailed yesterday, the defense under Covington had practically the same personnel that Steve Belichick had, minus Matthew Judon and Ju'Whaun Bentley for part of the season. And suffered a dropoff across the board year-to-year. From 7th in yards allowed to 22nd. From 11th in passer rating allowed to 26th. While this piece came up with a new, even damning metric:
They ranked eighth in the league in defensive EPA per play in 2023. They ranked 30th in that category this season.
Let's put this in terms we can all relate to. Imagine you work at say, Costco. You're the Assistant Manager, in charge of the Electronics department. The manager is your dad. One day, he gets fired because because sales have been down. Your department's still been making money, so your safe. Still, you understand you're not getting the job because it would be weird for everyone. Fine. But then rather than hire from outside, they promote someone who worked underneath you. And he decides to replace you with an even lower-level employee in your department. But he says you can stick around and go back to stocking shelves like you did years and years ago when your dad gave you your first job. What human being with a shred of self-respect would degrade and humiliate himself like that when he/she had other options?
Speaking of those options, let's check in on Belichick the Younger to see how he's living with his decision to nope out of Foxboro and let Mayo and Covington take the helm:
Seems like he's doing OK with his life choices.
But of course, there's more. Like how after his team got the Joe Pesci in Casino treatment in the desert of Arizona, Mayo spent the long, dreary trip on AirKraft One back to Providence playing cards with some of his players:
On a night when the frustration over a terrible performance had some wondering if their jobs were about to be in jeopardy, it was surprising to at least one person at the front of the plane to see the head coach mingling with players in such a casual way.
“Look, there are a lot of ways to do the job,” a team source who was on the plane said. “It’s not that Jerod’s was definitely wrong. But I can’t say I’ve seen that before.”
So it seems like, in his effort to "change the culture," to get rid of what Eliot Wolf called "the hardass vibe" around Foxboro, Mayo went to the other extreme. The situation that comes up in every war movie, where the officer has figure out where the line is drawn from being his men's friend to being their commander. Think Captain Miller in Saving Private Ryan or Dick Winters in Band of Brothers. Mayo went right to being Bill Murray in Stripes after Sgt. Hulka got blowed up.
The classic mistake of a guy who had long been an assistant, but had never been in charge before. And in Mayo's effort to be everybody's pal, discipline predictably suffered:
Mayo, according to team sources with knowledge of the situation, struggled with discipline and how to enforce it. Before the Patriots’ Week 17 game against the Los Angeles Chargers, he told broadcast crews he was going to bench running back Rhamondre Stevenson because of his recent fumbles. But when it was time to do so, he had a change of heart and let the running back start.
“I still don’t know what happened with that,” a team source said. “Honestly, Jerod is a good guy. I just don’t think he was ready for all the big decisions and discipline and focus the job takes.” …
Last week, linebacker Jahlani Tavai criticized the hometown fans for booing the team. Mayo addressed the topic in a team meeting, essentially coaching the group on the proper way to phrase looming questions on the issue. A few hours later, Tavai doubled down on his original comments. He never apologized.
If you start your coaching tenure vowing to treat your players the way you wanted to be treated and vowing not to police your players' right to express themselves, great. It's admirable to want to give them the respect every grown man deserves. But in doing so, you have to recognize that every grown man does and says dumb shit. Like fumbling a lot. And trashing the paying customers by saying fans "need to know their place." Even the best grown men need to be governed.
When it came to building the rest of his coaching staff, Mayo's lack of experience wasted no time biting him right in the ass:
[F]rom day one, Mayo ran into issues. It started while trying to build out his coaching staff. Mayo’s entire eight-year professional playing career was with one team and one coach. So Mayo’s Rolodex was tiny. He interviewed more than a dozen candidates for the offensive coordinator job before Alex Van Pelt finally accepted the role.
It's impossible to hold this one against Mayo. In football terms, he was a homeschooled kid who is bright and talented and likeable. But he hadn't been around town much. And so when it came time for him to put an invitation list together for his party, he found out he didn't know any of the other kids. Van Pelt accepted because no one else was inviting him to their parties.
This is just an early version of what promises to be many such exposes. A fair assessment of Mayo's tenure is that he was, to repeat Mr. Kraft's phrase, "in an untenable position." Promoted too high, too soon. But a lot of it is very much his own fault. If you're a fan of the guy - which I am - you hope he lands on his feet, learns from the experience and becomes the head coach he can be. If you care about seeing this team become great again - which I do even more - you hope ownership lands on its feet and learns from this as well. Be very cautious when it comes to putting a first time head coach in charge of your operation.