Jerod Mayo lacks the vision needed to lead the Patriots into the future.
While the New England Patriots may still have one game remaining in their season, I’ve seen enough to know that Jerod Mayo should not be back as head coach for next season. It is clear that he is simply not the team’s best option in 2025.
I want to preface my argument by saying a few things.
First, Jerod Mayo was not dealt a fair hand. He was handed a roster in disrepair, and he had a number of quality players traded, injured, or otherwise unavailable throughout the season. Despite five selections in the top 110 picks of last year’s NFL Draft, he was given just one significant rookie contributor by his general manager. He was asked to take on the task of rebuilding this team despite coaching for just five seasons with none at even a coordinator level.
Second, I think Mayo is more than capable of being a quality coach in this league, and he deserves a chance to catch on elsewhere. He was a leader as a player, taking on every snap his rookie year and earning a captainship in his third season. He has experience in business as an executive and experience as a defensive coach. Mayo is still just 38-years old, as well. This is not a eulogy of his coaching career; it’s an acknowledgement that he is not the right leader for the Patriots in this moment.
Third, Mayo’s legacy as a head coach takes nothing away from his accomplishments as a linebacker in New England or as a linebacker coach with the team.
Why the Patriots should part ways with Jerod Mayo
A simple argument could be made for moving on from Mayo just by looking at the overall results of the season. New England was expected to win 4.5 games this year by betting markets, the lowest mark in the league. That expectation included the hardest schedule in the NFL when initial odds were released, according to Warren Sharp, and a young, rookie quarterback expected to start an unknown number of games with a wide range of outcomes.
New England’s schedule has not been the hardest in the NFL, far from it. According to ESPN, their schedule is the 12th easiest in the league; Pro Football Reference has their schedule as the 5th easiest. Drake Maye has performed well as a rookie, starting 11 games with a passer rating of 88.3. That’s the 22nd best mark in the NFL, a dramatic increase from Mac Jones who finished 31st among qualifiers in the same number of starts.
Put it all together, and the picture is clear. The Patriots have gotten better quarterback play than expected against an easier schedule than projected, and they will still come up short. Their best case scenario involves winning a meaningless game just to match last year’s win total despite a massive upgrade at the most important position in the sport.
Forget arguments about fairness or needing more time; this sport is about results, and these results have not been good enough.
There is a bigger picture here, though. Even if you are willing to write off the results of this season as just part of a building and rebuilding process that was sure to have growing pains mixed with some bad luck, there are still good reasons to make a change.
I wrote a few weeks ago that, when evaluating who should coach this team moving forward, the team itself must look forward. The goal is not to explain why things went poorly in 2024. Instead, it’s to provide a vision for success in 2025 and an explanation as for why Jerod Mayo may or may not be the right man to execute it.
The Patriots enter the 2025 offseason with a myriad of holes on the roster, a vast amount of resources to fill them, and a quarterback in need of developing. The mission is simple to describe but complicated to execute: the head coach of this team must blend a number of highly-paid free agents with the existing roster while developing a young core that will likely include multiple highly-drafted rookies in addition to the selections from last year.
To achieve that goal, a coach must have a strong identity. The job involves knowing the types of players, skill-sets, and mentalities needed on the roster, all of which must be communicated to the personnel decision-makers and scouts. From there, the coach must work with the front office to identify both veteran and college players who have these traits, assign values to them, and then work to acquire these players at the appropriate prices. Then, once acquired, the coach will need to integrate them into the playbook and into the culture of the organization. Finally, after all of that, actual football can be played, with the coach working to game-plan from week to week while developing his roster, all with the help of a trusted team of coordinators and assistants helping to execute his vision.
Nothing we have seen from Jerod Mayo in 2024 gives me confidence he is the best man to handle these duties in 2025.
What went wrong for Jerod Mayo?
I question Mayo’s vision for what he wants this team to be. You can set your clock to the head coach making a comment after a game on Sunday that he’ll have walked back by noon on Monday. Perhaps the most egregious was when he ripped his team for being “soft” after not being able to stop the run in London, only to clarify that comment later to appease media criticism. Mayo had asserted himself as a new kind of leader in New England, one not afraid to praise or criticize his players publicly depending on their play. It took less than 24 hours for him to undermine that message by backtracking, despite his players taking the criticism well. If his vision can be altered that quickly and that easily by those who aren’t even in the building, then how are we to have faith it is strong enough to guide the direction of an entire organization through a massive offseason?
Despite repeatedly emphasizing that players and coaches must not be error repeaters, the errors have come early and often from Mayo and his fellow coaches in the press. After the loss to Arizona out of the bye, offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt was pressed on why he did not involve quarterback Drake Maye in the running game despite his athleticism. The answer was simple: health. It wasn’t worth the risk of injury given the team’s record this season. Yet, one week later, Van Pelt was calling designed runs for Maye. Did he no longer care for Maye’s health? Or had media criticism changed the equation once again?
Then, leading into last week’s contest with the Chargers, Mayo told both national TV broadcasters during the week and local radio right before the game that running back Antonio Gibson would get the start due to Rhamondre Stevenson’s fumbling issues. That’s why it was a surprise to everyone when Stevenson trotted out with the top unit for the first play. The reports must have come to a surprise to Gibson himself, who said after the game that he wasn’t told anything about starting. That leaves two options here: either Mayo’s plan was to lie to multiple outlets about starting lineups throughout the week, or he simply didn’t know or didn’t have control over who would actually start. This is an unforced, repeated error at best, and organizational dysfunction at worst. Either way, it hardly inspiring of a vision to build a team around.
The error-repeating hasn’t just been on the coaching staff, though. Run defense has been an issue for the team all season. From a poor scheme, to poor run fits, to poor tackling, the team has under-performed in every way and at all three levels of the defense.
This was the case early in the season, when poor run fits led to multiple 50-yard runs allowed in Drake Maye’s first start against Houston. This was followed by a performance against Jacksonville in which the defense had no schematic answer for their RPO game as the Jaguars ran it 17 consecutive times, inducing Mayo’s “soft” comment.
The team then over-corrected, selling out to stop the run while allowing the Los Angeles Rams and Miami Dolphins to dice up their heavy personnel through the air. With a late bye week and an opportunity to correct these issues, the Patriots instead allowed runs of 40 yards or more in each of their first two games out of the bye.
A common thread in all of these issues? The under-performance of the linebackers, the unit Mayo played in and coached. These players have seen little improvement throughout the season, and the unit has functioned as a liability against the pass and the run all season.
Situational decision-making and play has been another area where Mayo’s lack of vision and the attention-to-detail needed to execute it have faltered.
Against the Jacksonville Jaguars, the first-year head coach embraced a modern, aggressive style of decision-making. After a touchdown late pulled New England within eight, he opted to try for a two-point conversion. The logic is simple: make it, and you have the opportunity to win the game with a touchdown. Don’t, and you still have a chance to get two yards to tie the game. The Patriots called a play that seemed to work, but Ja’Lynn Polk stumbled, and the pass fell incomplete.
Two weeks later, Mayo was in a similar spot. After Drake Maye pulled them within one against the Titans with a miracle play as time expired, the head coach had the opportunity to push the envelope by trying for a two-point conversion to win the game right there. Instead, he backed off his previous aggression and played for overtime. Tennessee took seven-and-a-half minutes off the clock in overtime as the Patriots could not stop their running game, and the Titans kicked a go-ahead field goal. That left Drake Maye needing to pull off another two-minute drive to tie or win the game, one that was unsuccessful.
One month later, the Indianapolis Colts would come into Gillette Stadium and show how successful the aggressive approach could be. Despite out-gaining Indianapolis 422-253 on the afternoon and winning the turnover battle, the Colts got the ball back down by a touchdown late after the Patriots were unsuccessful at running the clock out or extending the lead. Indianapolis put together a 19-play scoring drive that included three fourth-down conversions, including a quarterback run to the outside where the Patriots did not have enough defenders. Instead of playing for the tie, Indy went for the win. They converted.
Mayo was willing to be aggressive, but his players were routinely unable or unprepared to make the right plays in key situations. This scared him into more conservative decisions that opponents exploited.
When you put this all together, it paints a grim picture. Mayo and his coaching staff have routinely been swayed away from their vision by outside factors while being unable to execute basic defensive principles at the position where Mayo both played and coached.
Improvement from this point is definitely possible, especially as Mayo gains experience and confidence. But when will it come? How long must we be expected to wait to see it happen, especially with the same issues happening 16 games into his first season that were happening at the outset? How certain are we that, if that improvement does come, it will be enough to maximize Drake Maye while he is still on his cheap rookie contract? The end goal here, after all, is to get to banner No. 7. How soon will Jerod Mayo be that caliber of coach, if he ever reaches that point?
This offseason marks a massive fork in the road for this organization. It is likely that the franchise will have both the top pick in the draft and the most cap space to spend in free agency. Those assets will be used to make decisions that will impact the team for years, with rookies expected to become cornerstones and veterans signing large contracts that will likely make them hard to move for the remainder of Maye’s deal.
Given what we have seen and heard from Jerod Mayo and the coaches he hired to support him this season, I find it hard to believe he can provide either the vision or the execution of it needed to make the most of this situation.