The New England Patriots’ coaching staff came out of its Week 14 bye feeling good. Sure, the team had suffered through a six-game losing streak and had a 3-10 record, but there was optimism that the final stretch of the season would go well. Rookie Drake Maye was fully entrenched as the starting quarterback, and his continued improvement, the coaches hoped, would lead to a strong finish.
They liked their plan entering that week’s game against the Arizona Cardinals. But they lost 30-17 in an uncompetitive snoozefest. The team looked incompetent, even with an extra week to prepare. That was the start of a terrible stretch that led to head coach Jerod Mayo’s swift firing Sunday night.
On the long plane ride back to TF Green International Airport in Providence, R.I., most of Mayo’s assistants grabbed their laptops and studied cut-ups from the loss, the customary move for NFL coaches during the return flight after games. A few executives slept so they’d be ready to work once the team buses rolled into the Gillette Stadium parking lots a little before 4 a.m.
Plane rides in the NFL are typically quiet after losses. Coaches and execs sit up front, players toward the back.
But in a move that surprised some at the front of the plane after such a lopsided loss, according to a team source, Mayo, the team’s first-year head coach who had been handpicked by owner Robert Kraft to succeed Bill Belichick, left his spot near the front and went back to where some players had gathered to play cards, choosing to hang out there while his assistants watched film.
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.”
GO DEEPER
Jerod Mayo firing was as much about his command off the field as the Patriots’ play on it
No one moment perfectly encapsulates all that went wrong in Mayo’s 12 months as the Patriots’ head coach. But to some on the plane, this felt like another example of Mayo going too far in the opposite direction of Belichick, the ultra-serious overseer of the Patriots for the previous 24 years.
It’s also fair to note that an anecdote like that could be spun as a positive if the team were winning, as one player noted. If the Patriots were 13-4, maybe the narrative becomes, Look how cool the new coach is as he relates to his players!
But in describing how and why things went wrong for Mayo and the Patriots, team sources pointed to a few things. Mayo, they felt, tried too hard to be 180 degrees different from Belichick, then struggled to apply and uphold discipline after positioning himself as a players’ coach.
He wasn’t experienced enough for the job, something Kraft acknowledged Monday, because of a succession plan that went sideways as Belichick’s tenure collapsed. Then, when Mayo needed mentorship because he wasn’t fully prepared for the gig, he didn’t have anyone to lean on because his network of other coaches was so small after only ever playing and working for Belichick and the Patriots.
And there’s also the obvious: Mayo was given arguably the worst roster in the NFL and was asked to deliver more wins with it than the greatest coach of all time did the year before.
“I feel terrible for Jerod because I put him in an untenable situation,” Kraft said, assuming the blame for Mayo’s struggles. “I know that he has all the tools as a head coach to be successful in this league. He just needed more time before taking the job.”
Robert Kraft on the decision to move on from Head Coach Jerod Mayo. pic.twitter.com/zTADw2lrui
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) January 6, 2025
Now, the Patriots are looking for their third head coach in three years. Kraft, his son and team president Jonathan Kraft, executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf and senior personnel executive Alonzo Highsmith will run point on a quick-moving search that could wrap up this week.
Soon, a new sense of optimism will arrive in Foxboro as the Patriots pair a new head coach with the promise of Maye. That relationship will be vital in a league in which success is often predicated on the union between coach and quarterback.
But not too long ago, there was optimism for Mayo, too, who was seen by Kraft as the perfect person to follow Belichick, someone who could be a bridge to the franchise’s past success while ushering in a new era with a new approach. Instead, the Patriots are back where they began, seeking change after another 4-13 season.
Big changes in New England
The plan seemed sound back in the early days of 2023. Mayo had garnered outside interest for a couple of head-coaching vacancies, and Kraft, who thought Mayo was destined to be a successful head coach, didn’t want to see any more brain drain from Belichick’s staff. So he put a succession plan in writing with Mayo and Belichick. Mayo would take over in 2025 after Belichick had two more years at the helm, giving the man in the hoodie ample time, they thought, to break Don Shula’s record for career wins. In turn, Belichick would mentor Mayo on various aspects of the head job to prepare him to take over.
But 2023 was a disaster from the get-go. The Patriots started the season 1-5 and 2-10. Belichick, always an insular coach, further withdrew during that season amid his team’s struggles, according to team sources with knowledge of the situation. He stopped talking altogether to multiple members of his already small coaching staff, cutting off communication with anyone perceived to be less than entirely loyal to him.
His relationship with Kraft was already tense as the pressure grew on the owner to make a change after another bad season following the departure of Tom Brady. Belichick’s tight circle shrunk even more. Along the way, the mentorship that was supposed to occur between Belichick and Mayo never happened.
The situation was, to use Kraft’s terminology this week, untenable. So the owner split with Belichick a year earlier than planned.
When Kraft turned to Mayo, he knew the then-37-year-old hadn’t gotten the understudy experience he’d originally planned on, but the hope was Mayo would learn quickly on the job.
Toward the end of Bill Belichick’s tenure with the Patriots, his relationships with some of his assistants, including Jerod Mayo, had deteriorated. (Mark Brown / Getty Images)
But from 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.
With the defensive coordinator role, the other most important spot on his staff, Mayo was surprisingly decisive. 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.
This season, the Patriots’ drop-off on defense was the biggest reason for their struggles. They ranked eighth in the league in defensive EPA per play in 2023. They ranked 30th in that category this season.
Mayo’s lack of connections meant he had to lean on Wolf and others in the front office to fill out his staff. When it was completed, the Patriots had a first-time front-office leader (Wolf), a first-time head coach (Mayo), a first-time defensive coordinator (Covington), a first-time offensive play caller (Van Pelt), a first-time special teams coordinator (Jeremy Springer), a first-time offensive line coach (Scott Peters), a first-time wide receivers coach (Tyler Hughes) and a first-time linebackers coach (Dont’a Hightower). It’s not that any one of them was a bad hire individually but that all of them together led to too many people figuring out their jobs on the fly.
As a result, Mayo was left without an experienced sounding board during the more difficult days of the season.
But that wasn’t the only issue.
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.”
The best coaches often have such a command of the locker room that players echo whatever they say. But that didn’t exist with the Patriots. 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.
According to team sources, Mayo struggled to toe the line between players’ coach and disciplinarian. (Brian Fluharty / Imagn Images)
The NFL is a results business. If rookie receiver Ja’Lynn Polk had gotten his toe on the ground in a Week 5 game against the Miami Dolphins and the Pats had gotten a successful 2-point play against the Tennessee Titans, they would have had six wins and Mayo probably would have returned. Wins matter.
There was also the elephant in the room: The best free-agent coach, Mike Vrabel, is a Patriots Hall of Fame player who maintains a good relationship with Kraft. To keep Mayo would be to turn down Vrabel a second time without so much as an interview.
Still, the last month of the season weighed on Kraft. The Patriots were blown out by the Cardinals, squandered a 14-point lead against the Buffalo Bills and were smoked 40-7 by the Chargers. Kraft had been going back and forth on the Mayo decision, but those losses sealed it despite a surprising Week 18 win over the Bills.
“I don’t like losing, and I don’t like losing the way we lost,” Kraft said. “Things were not developing the way we would have liked. It was time to move on.”
A year ago, Kraft sat next to Mayo on a celebratory day in a posh and renovated area of Gillette Stadium, thrilled and confident he was ushering in a new era. But little of the ensuing year went as planned. The lack of connections and mentors. The trouble filling out the coaching staff. The first-timers at every meaningful spot. The trouble balancing being a players’ coach with being a disciplinarian.
It’s only fair to recognize that Mayo was dealt a bad hand. The roster he was given by Belichick and Wolf was more flawed and devoid of talent than any other in the league.
In the end, Mayo was done no favors with the situation he was dropped into. But he also didn’t do much to help himself.
(Top photo: Tina MacIntyre-Yee / Democrat and Chronicle / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
