I wonder if BB knew this?
According to reports, yes he knew.
Good older article on Mayo if you have The Athletic
Couple Highlights:
-Spike called him Bill Belichick 2.0
-As a player he sat in on the coaches meeting, which players don't do.
-Him and Brady were the 2 hardest workers on the team, he was compared to Brady on the same level in terms of work ethic and love of the game.
-A Harvard research fellow that wrote 2 books on how organizations select high-impact leaders met with Mayo
"“There are a lot of people who can do X’s and O’s, but what the research tells us is that this characteristic — ‘intellectual brilliance’ — is the thing most likely to distinguish them,” Mukunda said. “It’s related to IQ but not the same. It’s horsepower with openness to new ideas, creativeness, broadness in taste.”
It’s something, Mukunda said, that most owners don’t consider, “a market inefficiency of stunning scale in the NFL.” And it’s a trait that Mayo personifies.
“If you get a chance to pick someone like Jerod, you pick them,” Mukunda said. “I don’t know if it’s with the Patriots or some other team, but Jerod will be a head coach in the NFL one day.
Ownership thinks highly of him. Former teammates revere him. Colleagues praise him. Could the former "teacher's pet" replace a legend?
theathletic.com