New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo is walking the fine line of trying to make organizational culture changes without coming off as disrespectful to predecessor Bill Belichick.
Mayo responded Wednesday after scouting director Eliot Wolf’s comments about his style being “less hard[-headed],” which was taken by some as a criticism of Belichick’s style. Mayo made clear that the new regime is not seeking to repudiate Belichick, but simply looking to adopt a style that works for it.
“It’s going to be different, but at the same time I would say Bill did a great job for a long period of time,” Mayo said, via Mike Reiss of ESPN. “I don’t want you [in the media] to take this as ‘because we’re changing, there are shots toward the previous regime.’ In saying that, we will do it differently and it will feel different. But at the end of the day, we would like to replicate the success that the prior regime has had. I learned a lot from Bill and also his staff. Now we’ll see what this chapter looks like in the franchise.”
It is a bit unfair that Mayo has to deal with this, but it comes with the territory when succeeding a Hall of Famer. We have seen plenty of examples of Belichick proteges trying to adopt his style elsewhere unsuccessfully, so it is probably a good sign that Mayo is not trying to go that route.
What we do not know is whether the new regime is as high on certain players as the previous one. We will find out soon enough if the team actually pursues a different roster-building strategy.
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