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The Tragedy of Jerod Mayo

Well it’s Official… Jerod Mayo is no longer the Head Coach of the New England Patriots. A job that was promised to the former Pats Linebacker a whopping 5 years ago was available for the second time in a calendar year just an hour after the team gave away the first overall pick. We’ll get to what happened with the aforementioned coaching vacancy shortly but I want to talk about what happened leading up to the exit of Mayo. Let me start by saying this: I do think Jerod Mayo is a good coach, I think it’s important to give a coach time to build a culture (see Dan Campbell) I think that it’s insane to fire somebody due to a teams performance that’s THIS bereft of talent. However I can think all those things and still sit here and tell you 1. Team performance had a lot less to do with the firing than you think. 2. Mayo simply wasn’t ready to be a HC and that’s okay. 

Robert Kraft said himself while announcing the firing that he put Mayo in “an untenable situation”. This roster was not good enough, the coaching staff outside of Mayo were way too young and unproven and the media was going to eat him alive. Even before the season started we had sound bites of Mayo saying one thing and then walking it back or flat out doing the opposite. When asked about Drake Maye and Jacoby Brissett during the preseason he said that Drake had outplayed Brissett then two weeks later started Brissett for the home opener. Puzzling, and that’s coming from a guy who wanted Drake to sit and wait. He called players soft after a loss in London to the Jaguars where the locker room was dealing with a flu. For those of you saying “well those were early in the year” THE FINAL GAME OF THE YEAR HE WAS STILL DOING IT. They said they were benching Rhamondre Stevenson due to his fumble issue. Fine. Then you started him anyway, he played one series and never saw the field again. You played him JUST enough to contradict yourself. ALLEGEDLY this was due to a communication error within the patriots coaching staff. Mayo told the media he was benching Stevenson but never informed coaches. 

Those are 3 examples of a larger issue that went on all year. General dysfunction. It’s okay if Mayo was on the sideline calling plays, being more involved, navigating the media (all things that were question marks when he was hired) and we start to look a little bit better each week. We didn’t. What we got was constant camera pans to Mayo alone on the sideline doing nothing. There are “CEO” head coaches in the league that have success but they have far better rosters and far better supporting casts when it comes to coaching.. What we got this year was a clusterfuck of media mismanagement. What we got for “culture building” was by the end of the year everybody was talking to the media just like Jerod Mayo because they knew there were no repercussions. We didn’t have big bad Bill Belichick demanding excellence out of everybody from Tom Brady to the third string gunner. What We had Jerod Mayo playing cards after a blowout loss while his coaching staff is reviewing film. Oh yeah AND we won a meaningless game against Buffalo to cost ourselves the first overall pick and a potential kings ransom of a trade package. Dont blame Joe Milton for that. He had one chance to showcase himself at a chance for millions of dollars… of course he went out there to ball out. 

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He wasn’t fired because the team had 4 wins. This was always going to be a 3-5 win team. He was fired because of how he handled a 4 win team. You could have a 3-5 min compilation of all the stupid shit he said this year to the media. He lost the locker room he lost the fan base and ultimately lost the faith of ownership. I want him to get another shot somewhere (when he’s ready) and i have confidence that he’ll learn from his patriots tenure and put it together somewhere else. With all that happened this year we couldn’t afford to let him stay another year and work through “growing pains” we found a franchise quarterback this year and a damn good one at that. We have a top 5 pick. We have the most cap space in the league, there’s an obvious coaching answer available and he just so happens to have a very familiar face … this was a bandaid that had to be ripped off before we can truly fix this franchise. 

THE BALLAD OF MIKE VRABEL 

🎼🎼AND THEN I SAW HER FACE 🎼🎼

In walks Mike Vrabel. 3 time super bowl champion, Patriots ring of honor, former HC of the Tennessee Titans certified badass AND NEW head coach of the New England Patriots: Mike Vrabel. God i couldn’t be more excited. The night and day comparisons don’t even do this justice. If you want to see the difference just watch the introductory press conferences of both Mayo and Vrabel and you’ll immediately see the differences. This is a guy that will handle the media with ease. He has a ton of well respected coordinators and position coaches that would run through a wall for him. Former players speak incredibly highly of him. He knows what it’s like to win at a high level and he’s just an all around leader of men. 

I fully believe when Vrabel and the titans decided to part ways it put Robert Kraft in a predicament. It was pretty well known Vrabel wanted to come back to NE and it was pretty well known that after Belichick “walked away” the job would be going to Jerod Mayo: the heir apparent. Nobody thought Vrabel would be available after a really good tenure with the titans with some below average rosters and that includes the Kraft’s. As a tumultuous first season under Jerod Mayo began to wind down the daydreaming of what life would be like with Vrabel began to ramp up. This team went from a very defined culture to identity purgatory in less than a calendar year. Bringing Vrabel in with the most cap space in the league, a top draft pick more power than he had in Tennessee a far better QB than he did in Tennessee is a fantastic blueprint for building a culture and getting back to that “patriot way”. Can you tell how fired up i am? This is a dream scenario. I remember Vrabel being good with the titans but let’s look at how good. 

6 seasons 3 playoff appearances two division titles and they beat us in Tom Brady’s final home game. The titans put together two top 10 offenses under Vrabel and mainly on the back of King Henry. The QB of those top 10 offenses? Ryan Tannehill… yeah… dolphins Ryan Tannehill. His defenses allowed more than 20 points a game just one time in 6 seasons and I’d like to think if they had a better QB he could’ve had a Super Bowl appearance. 

This was the right move the second Titans ownership decided to fire Mike but due to negligent promises from a vacation to Israel we weren’t in the position to make it happen. Well Lo and Behold Mayo made it pretty easy for this decision to get made a year later. Vrabel is the perfect guy to bridge the gap from “the patriot way” to “life after Bill”. Hard nosed, takes no shit, true leader and he’s already had a mildly successful stint coaching elsewhere. Can we say the same about Mayo? There’s always gonna be the argument that if the man was given the proper time that he could’ve turned it around and I’ll listen to those arguments but you have to listen to this one. We didn’t have the time to wait around and hoped it got better Especially when a team like the jets are circling Vrabel. Drake Maye is ready to take this offense to the next level. The franchise is positioned to put the pieces around him to make that happen. The defense needs an attitude adjustment and some more leadership which Vrabel will have instilled by game one I’m sure of it. Pats fans, we’re back. We’ve got our guy. It’s time to get back into championship contention and it starts in 2025. LETS. FUCKING. GO.