Cool Link Ian article & Mayo Legacy

[Ring 6]

don't worry about what he says... r6 wouldn't know what a strawman is even if it walked up and punched him in the face

Well apparently you don’t. So there’s that.

 

[Steve102]

The Mayo experience was a complete success. Gave us the draft position to get all the great picks we got this year and gave us that bridge year to get Vrabel as our HC.

 

[Tunescribe]

no. the Mayo experiment was a complete and total failure

Agreed. And in Boutte's case, the Mayo "insightfully benevolent mentor" argument doesn't fly very far. Kayshon showed plenty of raw ability early on to warrant being kept.

 

[VrabelJr]

Everyone is allowed to have their own hobbies but finding silver linings for Jerod Mayo as a HC is not a hobby I’ll be taking up

 

[Spiral]

I feel bad for Jerod. He was elevated to a position for which he had neither the qualifications nor the experience. Ideally, he would have gained more experience as an assistant or coordinator before getting a HC job. It's going to be hard for him to start climbing the ladder again. The Krafts bear some responsibility for this.

 

[tasmlab]

It’s just really unfortunate.

There’s not a lot of players who from their rookie year had as much universal respect as he had, he had an admirable career both as a player and as a person, and I think he could have developed into a good coach over time.

It was just a ridiculously premature decision to give him that job so early.

He not even 40 yet, so he may be able to reclaim a coaching career. Maybe 10 years as a coordinator (which he probably should've done first) and people may forget about his time as NEP head coach.

He was a pretty popular guy previous to getting the big job. Belichick only won one more game his first year here as Mayo.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

I feel bad for Jerod. He was elevated to a position for which he had neither the qualifications nor the experience. Ideally, he would have gained more experience as an assistant or coordinator before getting a HC job. It's going to be hard for him to start climbing the ladder again. The Krafts bear some responsibility for this.

Kraft admitted as much, more than once IIRC. He even factored that into his evaluation, but came to the conclusion that Mayo hadn't shown enough personal improvement as a coach from January 2024 to January 2025 to warrant a year 2, especially given the talent Maye had shown as a QB.

 

[Patjew]

A broken clock is right twice a day….

Mayo is a broken digital clock.

 

[imahobgoblin]

It’s just really unfortunate.

There’s not a lot of players who from their rookie year had as much universal respect as he had, he had an admirable career both as a player and as a person, and I think he could have developed into a good coach over time.

It was just a ridiculously premature decision to give him that job so early.

There is evidence Mayo was a nice guy. There is no evidence that he would have developed into a good coach over time. He wasn't even trusted to call defensive plays. A kid beat him to it, and it was not given because of the kids name. That kid is a good DC.

 

[Tunescribe]

I feel bad for Jerod. He was elevated to a position for which he had neither the qualifications nor the experience. Ideally, he would have gained more experience as an assistant or coordinator before getting a HC job. It's going to be hard for him to start climbing the ladder again. The Krafts bear some responsibility for this.

Mayo's own hubris takes the blame here for most of it, although Bob Kraft was an unwise enabler.

 

[DarrylS]

IfI remember correctly Mayo had difficulty attracting quality coordinators and position coaches, not to infer he would have succeeded but compare last years staff to this year's staff... Marrone, McDaniels & Terrell (now Zur) are Infinitely better...

 

[One-If-By-Sea]

IfI remember correctly Mayo had difficulty attracting quality coordinators and position coaches, not to infer he would have succeeded but compare last years staff to this year's staff... Marrone, McDaniels & Terrell (now Zur) are Infinitely better...

Great point. Mayo was doomed from the start. Could not attract quality coaches or players. He did not know how to organize or administrate. Even his first press conference was lousy. Very poor selection for a head coach. But Kraft quickly recovered.

 

[The Gr8est]

Sorry, Robert isn’t hiring Art Rooney, he’s already got Jonathan in place.

You missed the point.

Maybe Art Rooney would be as impressed with Mayo as Bob was and hire him as HC.

 

[Thelonious]

I was thinking about Mayo the other day. It's sort of worrisome that he has dropped off the map so entirely since his firing. I haven't seen a word from or even really about him over all that time. If he were a relative or an acquaintance, you might ask the cops to do a welfare check or something. It's almost creepy. I almost feel guilty for advocating his firing. I wonder if Kraft has been in touch with him.

Robert shouldn't have hired him, of course - promised him the job in advance, fer cryin' out loud, at a point in time where he was obviously not yet ready. Was Mayo really so charming a travel companion that Robert became that besotted? Was he motivated to a degree by a desire to undercut Boston's rep for racism. (A load of crap, of course, given Boston's rabid leftist leanings, but whiners will whine.) Or was it simply that Jerrod is a "NIce Guy." We do live in an era, after all, in which being "nice," that trivial lame-ass faux "virtue" which has nearly supplanted to a very concerning degree all the more substantive, traditional virtues. I suspect that's the main thing, frankly, but this is probably because this is a pet peeve of mine. When someone says, "I love my new doctor,; he's so nice" I always think, "So the **** what: is he any good at his job?" My cardiologist has all the charm of a wolverine; but he's smart, and he's honest about what's up. I respect that.

Mayo obviously was not good at his job. I really can't think of a single aspect of his tenure which can honestly be called a success. I frankly never saw much from him which suggested legitimately that he likely would succeed. Did he ever really take on in full the DC job. or was he just a sort of Bill's Gofer or mouthpiece, then a sort of helpmeet to Bill's kid? Was there ever really any relevance of Jerrod's "business experience" - sitting at a desk, schmoozing with the odd fat cat, one suspects - to the actual skills required to succed as a head coach?

I don't think so. Robert bamboozled himself into thinking so, it seems, then - give him credit - realized his error and reversed it, no doubt a very painful thing to do.

The whole thing is strange, verging on bizarre, and really quite sad. I hope Jerrod is OK, and I wish there were some evidence that he is.

 

[Tunescribe]

Even his first press conference was lousy.

I will forever remember how shockingly bad that was. Nothing about his football philosophy, just patting himself on the back for supposedly knowing (quoting verbatim) "how to build character in young men and young women."

 

[Tunescribe]

I hope Jerrod is OK, and I wish there were some evidence that he is.

Rest assured that pretender is laughing all the way to the bank where another monthly $200k auto-deposit magically appears, courtesy of his ol' pal Thundercat.

 

[ctpatsfan77]

I don't think so. Robert bamboozled himself into thinking so, it seems, then - give him credit - realized his error and reversed it, no doubt a very painful thing to do.

The whole thing is strange, verging on bizarre, and really quite sad. I hope Jerrod is OK, and I wish there were some evidence that he is.

Two things.

First, he didn't go straight into coaching after playing, so it's likely that he went into a non-football job after coaching. That or he's just taking some family time on Kraft's dime.

Second, his intelligence was clear; his teammates called him Bill Jr. as a rookie. it didnt translate into HC ability, but I can at least understand why Kraft might have thought he could do it.

 

[Tunescribe]

Two things.

First, he didn't go straight into coaching after playing, so it's likely that he went into a non-football job after coaching. That or he's just taking some family time on Kraft's dime.

Second, his intelligence was clear; his teammates called him Bill Jr. as a rookie. it didnt translate into HC ability, but I can auring t least understand why Kraft might have thought he could do it.

RKK wasn't sold on Mayo for his football smarts as much as a "gut feeling" about Jerod's leadership potential demonstrated during a visit to Israel.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft dives deep into why he chose Jerod Mayo

Patriots owner Robert Kraft talks with MassLive about the reasons he chose an inexperienced coach to lead his team into the future.

www.masslive.com

From the article:

Even more special was what happened prior to returning home. The flight was delayed. That’s when Mayo rose to the occasion.

“The main thing, we’re at the airport getting ready to leave, and there was a big delay. So we had all of these guys sitting around,” Kraft explained. “Then Jerod organized a meeting with a forum and held a discussion on the trip. He did it all on his own.

“And at that moment, I saw the initiative and the way people respected him. And I said to myself: ‘He’s going to be our next head coach.’”

 

[ctpatsfan77]

RKK wasn't sold on Mayo for his football smarts as much as a "gut feeling" about Jerod's leadership potential demonstrated during a visit to Israel.

My point is that it's not Kraft simply deciding this about some guy he had just met a few weeks before. It was informed by what he knew of Mayo as a player.

 

[VrabelJr]

Weird revisionist history to recruit sympathies for Jerod Mayo. He sped up BB's demise by being a mouthpiece to the media to poison the locker room (granted BB was doing a decent job of this on his own) because he knew the HC job would be his. Mayo strikes me as a sociopath and I doubt anyone in the NFL will ever touch him. Do not shed a tear for Jerod Mayo.