The Patriots have immediately filled Bill Belichick‘s coaching position. New England has promoted linebackers coach Jerod Mayo as the team’s new head coach, ESPN’s Mike Reiss notes. The team has since announced the move.
As previously noted, the Patriots included succession language in Mayo’s latest contract. As a result, the team was not obligated to satisfy the Rooney Rule and interview outside candidates for the position. Instead, Mayo has immediately been tapped to lead the Patriots on the sidelines beginning in the 2024 season, one which will be the first in nearly a quarter century without Belichick at the helm. 
Given Mayo’s stock within the organization, the move (which Reiss adds will be made confirmed in a press conference next week) comes as little surprise. The former first-round pick spent his entire playing career in New England, earning a number of accolades along the way including Defensive Rookie of the Year, two Pro Bowl invitations and an All-Pro nod after leading the league in tackles in 2010. He has been a Patriots coach since 2019.
Mayo was seen as a HC candidate in New England but around the NFL as well. The Panthers extended an invitation to interview him for their vacancy last offseason, but he turned it down. With his status as Belichick’s heir apparent seemingly confirmed with his new contract, Mayo was frequently labeled the top candidate to watch in the event the Patriots parted ways with their 24-year coach. Indeed, Dianna Russini of The Athletic reports New England made no inquiries into the top outside candidates in this year’s cycle, opting to immediately turn to Mayo once Belichick was officially gone.
At the age of 37, Mayo will now surpass Sean McVay as the league’s youngest head coach. The Rams Super Bowl winner has proven to be a sound hire given his track record, but Mayo’s resume is considerably thinner than that of many other options currently on the market. Nevertheless, he will now be tasked with helping to oversee a signficant organizational reset, a process which will include the hiring of a general manager after decades of Belichick wearing both hats.
Ian Rapoport of NFL Network confirms New England will now look to bring in a GM to partner with Mayo. Given the relative inexperience of the team’s new coach, a lengthy track record in the front office would presumably be a key target for New England’s next hire. Struggles in the draft during the past several years has left the Patriots short on cost-effective talent at a number of positions, something the new decision-makers will look to rectify as soon as possible.
Set to be among the league leaders in cap space ahead of free agency and owners of the No. 3 pick in April’s draft, the Patriots will be a team to watch closely this offseason. Acquiring a franchise quarterback will be a top priority given the struggles shown by Mac Jones over the past two seasons and the lack of starting-level promise shown by Bailey Zappe. It remains to be seen who will lead the organization in the front office moving forward, but Mayo can now begin the transition to head coaching responsibilities for the first time in his career.
Given today’s news, the first of eight HC vacancies around the league has been filled. Plenty of other dominoes have yet to fall, but New England now has its 2024 plan in place along the sidelines before any of the other teams still in need of a new hire.
Good for Mayo but –
7-10 next year at best
That’s pretty deflating for Pats fans.
Deflating? 7-10 would be a 3 game improvement.
That is a fact.
It is a play on words
It would be a play on words if it dealt with this 2018 season. In this case it’s just dumb and irrelevant to the ops comment
So true.
I mean, who needs a progressive offensive mind HC when you can be excited about a 7 win season!
Hooray for mediocrity!
Right?
since race is very very very important and appropriate thing to talk about,
I’m wondering if the steelers are finally going to be allowed to hire a white coach if tomlin steps down.
good luck to the Patriots. put in your time and eventually can get Vrabel in a few years…
I dunno, deflating seems to be a good thing historically for the Pats…
Exactly it’s good for him.. but damn Kraft is an idiot. Talk about rushing to hire someone
A pair of 5-12 seasons and he’ll be out
5-12
More like 3-15 he’s just another d mined guy and a archaic offense and a cheap owner who’d rather build more useless things instead of paying for good players they need to replace everyone on offense starting with O’Brien
I have to see how mayo drafts. If they pass up another qb and WRs the fans will scrutinize him hard. Patriots have a solid defense when healthy 90% of their issues is offense production
Well done, need a AC and a QB now.
Who is the QB IN 24? They are a sinking ship in that division. The dynasty was over after #12 left.
Never begun until #12 arrived. They were a morbid franchise.
Morbid? They were in the playoffs 4 of the 6 previous seasons before Belichick got there, including a SB appearance in 96-97.
1 SB appearance in ’85 and once w/ Parcells. Look at the rest of their history. Well below .500.
They were in the SB in 96 v. the Rams.
Wow, cant wait to read your review of the Jets…
My view of the Jets? You least winning QB is over 80 years old!
Still not “morbid before #12 arrived. Jets are a morbid franchise. Browns are too. And the Jags. Cardinals. All morbid. Plenty other franchises would love to have 2 SB appearances in 11 years
Not to mention good in the 80s and late 70s.
Moribund, you malapropists. Don’t massacre the English language!
Time to rebuild!
Cronyism can be a wonderful thing.
He had a contract. Did you expect Kraft to breach the contract?
Didnt Mayo sign that new deal last season?
People just hate the Pats to hate them. Its kind of embarassing and hilarious that so many people are STILL upset about the Pats.
It means BB, Kraft and Brady were the best villians the NFL ever had. You will all missed them.
I don’t even like the Pats and I find it so cringe. People letting their emotions about sports take over as an adult. And then some saying Bill Belichick is a bad coach. It really is embarrassing. Not even from just a common sense stand point, but not one football mind would ever consider BB a bad coach. But daily message board people know wayyyyy more, I forgot.
Agreed. As a Steelers fan, I’m inclined to hate the Pats but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the greatness of Brady, Belichick and the franchise. Sheesh.
I’m of the belief that younger guys like Mayo probably communicate best with today’s players. Guess we’ll see
And yeah, imagine an owner abiding by a contract
I figured the village idiot would be here
So Belichick was kind of a lame duck this year.
How to you hire a head coach with out a gm?
Poorly. Then once the GM is in place, if there isn’t monster success within 2-3 years, there will be a new HC.
Teams who have a clear identity don’t have the squabbling among the GM and coaches. Think Steelers, Ravens, Giants, etc. I included the Giants because even though they’ve fallen on hard times, you never hear rifts between the two entities because the owners have made expectations clear to everyone what their franchise is about, so everybody better figure out how to row the boat together. That having your own guy stuff is stupid. Getting good players is getting good players, and coaching those players to their potential is your job as a coach.
I like mayo but they should have done a complete reset and new identity
And breach the agreement they made with Mayo last season?
That would not be a huge deal right? Nobody would criticise the Pats and Kraft for stopping a guy who was a HC candidate in 2022, giving him a new contract, with a succession clause and then back out of that deal…
Great move. You must work as In house counsel.
They were expecting bill to coach a couple more years then hand it off. With parting with bill early and where your franchise is right now you have the opportunity to reset. This is a hard position for Mayo to be in. Again I like Mayo but this is not setting him or the pats up for success.
Doesn’t sound like that at all. Sounds like they gave him one more chance and then when he failed, they pushed the button. I mean Belichick only had one more year left on his contract after this year.
Why wouldn’t you atleast interview Ben Johnson and Vrabel. That makes no sense to me.
Because they signed a Deal in 2022 which gave Mayo succession of BB.
How is this not obvious?
I heard that same thing with Josh McDaniels. They should have opened up the search.
It’s obvious but still stupid that Kraft agreed to that contract without interviewing more people with different ideas.
What happen to Vrabel n hold the Mayo ?
The Rooney Rule Happened
A consideration, but doubtful in this case. There was an understanding. In writing.
Rooney rule has nothing to do with this. Seattle did the same thing with Mora Jr. back in the day after Holmgren. Ravens did the same thing with Decosta on the personnel side. It’s a loophole that lets you give an assistant coach or GM in waiting status. Kraft just thinks Mayo is going to be the next big thing. We’ll find out next year.
They are hiring a black coach so how could anyone get mad about the Rooney Rule
I can get mad, because the Rooney Rule Sucks
So having a contractual succession plan is a loophole to avoid having to interview outside candidates?
Seems to defeat the purpose of the rule.
As long as he is the right color. Some people are more equal than others.
The NFL will probably fine the Pats somehow. Either $ or via the draft. The Pats violated the Rooney rule. You have to interview two candidates that fit the Rooney rule who are “Outside the Organization”.
The NFL was aware of this would be New England in house hire. The Pats had already drew up a HC contract to hire Mayo about a year ago according to one of the NFL insiders. The NFL gave it a green light already, plus being a minority, they waived the Rooney Rule in this case. Now the question will they hire a GM???
It’s allowed in the rules. This sin’t anything new. How many teams do you know have known their guy they have is about to retire or leave? It happened with Dungy, and it happened with Holmgren. This was a little different because it wasn’t Belichick retiring but rather that Kraft gave him the courtesy of one more year to fix it, and he didn’t, but he already was planning to hire Mayo, so he wrote it up in his contract to turn down job opportunities a year ago. My guess is had Belichick turned it around, he would have either let him go or asked him to stay and wait to see if it was sustained past one year.
Mayo is African American. So there is a minority coaching the Pats. Isnt that the reason for the Rooney Rule? To give minority coaches a chance at the top jobs.
Not really. It means you’re not searching for a coach, so why would you need to interview anybody including any minority candidates? Most teams aren’t going to be promoting anyone from within. It’s a pretty unique situation for you to write it in a contract to begin with. People want to get outraged over everything these days, even stupid stuff like this.
I’m more surprised that they went with a Defensive HC given their poor Offense.
I don’t think the coach matters much when there’s no talent on offense to work with.
It is an offense driven league now.
I agree.
That’s not how coaching goes. Bills offense had been pretty prolific the last few years with a former DC as head coach. The Patriots were the greatest offense of all time with Belichick as head coach. You need a quarterback. We’ve seen plenty of offensive geniuses fail when they got their own team. You miss the Hackett show a year ago in Denver?
Another way of seeing this is more of the same.
Congrats to Mayo on his promotion.
My only problem with it is that is opens the door for other clubs to put a succession clause in their assistant coaches’ contract, which I am okay with, but it will most likely bring about complaints of unfairness.
These are businesses, they should be allowed to higher whoever they want, minority or not. The Rooney rule has value as it requires the organization to look at different candidates and gives them an opportunity to experience an NFL head coach interview which could prepare them for future interviews if not hired.
What I don’t like about the rule is that some of the Rooney rule interviewees are only selected for interview because they are a minority versus merit. However, you could also say some of the non-minority interviewees are selected because they may have some sort of connection to the club versus merit as well.
Every team is aware of it. It’s not the first time it’s been done. How many teams want to promote someone on a failing staff? The other two times it happened, Holmgren had a bad last year, and Dungy went out after another good year. This isn’t something on the secret In and Out menu or something. Everyone knows about it.
Nice hire by the Pats. But this being a result league and one-year firings are in vogue in the NFL. How much leash do you give him? This team has a lot of holes and no QB. Do the Pats go out and sign a solid veteran QB or do they give Jones another tries or do they move up in the draft and get a top 3 QB??
They seem to have a nice defense but how long does it take to put an offense in place—with a vet or otherwise— that will compete in a loaded division? You’d think he’d be given three years, no? But in today’s NFL, who knows?
We’ll see if someone else can coach that defense like Belichick. He could always get the most out of what wouldn’t appear to be as much talent as it appeared on paper on that side of the ball.
The have the 3rd pick. They dont need to move up if they are comfortable with whichever QB is left at 3rd. Williams, Maye, and Daniels will be the first 3 picks regardless of which teams are selecting.
Daniels is going to be taken way too early. Assuming Williams and Maye are 1 and 2, I’d rather the Pats take MHJ at 3, then trade up into the back end of the 1st to take whatever QB remains.
It’s kinda ironic insofar as all the elements wrapped up in this announcement.
The main one most will argue is the impact of The Rooney Rule. Personally, I can’t stand & avoid the entire New England region for the same alleged intent of The Rule. Look for some “man on the street reactions” to this announcement but don’t be surprised by some of the more “colorful” comments.
Anyway, that franchise is facing some lean seasons. Having a much more palatable scapegoat for its local fans will help the medicine go down I guess.
tl/dr
dismissing his elevation to The Rule is a red flag to the probability any failure being support for the argument of The Rule being a failure as well; regardless of its actual
Intent
Not here to debate how a history of denial “due to” can be reconciled; just adding my 2¢
I’m was just curious to see if arty would eat a taco smothered in Kraft Mayo.
Here’s why the Rooney Rule is awful…
People who are opposed to racism AND racists both hate it.
Something has gone wrong if they end up on the same side.
There are ways to create opportunities that are not explicitly race based.
Hmm. It doesn’t keep me up at night that white guys aren’t getting all of the jobs. That’s just me though. more than likely your coach will fail, and you dummies are here debating NFL jobs like it’s the real world.
Patriots hire Nick Saban as GM to team with Mayo as HC.
I’m surprised they went with someone within the organization. I would have thought they would have gone with someone “new”, so to speak.
I guess the Rooney Rule only goes one way.