Tom Brady made his move, driving one night to Robert Kraft’s home in Brookline to inform him that he wanted to leave the New England Patriots machine and venture elsewhere. Bill Belichick made his move, too. First, by drafting Jimmy Garoppolo to supplant Brady. And, then, by failing to protest when the space between he and Brady became palpable and the playmakers around the quarterback dried up, causing immense frustration.
Now, Kraft has made his step forward by hiring Jerod Mayo as the team’s next head coach. Mayo is the first Black head coach in team history. He is the youngest coach in the NFL right now at age 37. Kraft had long ago identified Mayo as a potential successor and had written as much into the former Pro Bowl linebacker’s contract. At a critical moment in the franchise’s lifecycle, he has relied on his instincts.
Despite Mike Vrabel, another player with Patriots ties with a track record of head coaching success available, Kraft decided to stick with a plan that was years in the making. He eschewed what would be a fan-pacifying move and, perhaps likely, a quicker path back to relevance, for a decision that could either highlight his brilliance or his hubris.
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The breakup of the Patriots’ dynasty has been a series of chess-like decisions. At stake is something far more important than the number of championships the team won together. What exists now is a kind of crude and faulty methodology for determining the credit for those championships. While, I think, the smartest of us will maintain that the team’s six Super Bowl victories from 2001 to ’18 were the product of having the three perfect people in the perfect place at the perfect time, there are large swaths of Patriots watchers who will be able to make their own decisions based on the moves each has made independently of one another.
At the moment, Brady has only solidified his case as the engine behind the Patriots’ dynasty. Belichick, at 72, will have to recharge a franchise on his own, should he land a job this cycle.
And Kraft, 82, will need to spearhead a new path forward utilizing the coach he had always wanted to replace Belichick, while surrounding Mayo with a more traditional football structure that includes a personnel department.
Vrabel being available adds another fascinating dynamic. While I applaud Kraft for sticking to his succession plan—there have been countless head coaches who have stomped out potential heir apparents, and countless owners or athletics directors who have panicked at the last minute and hired someone splashier—Vrabel’s future success, too, can impact how we are viewing Kraft’s individual acumen as an identifier and developer of talent.
Consider the task ahead: Mayo, again, the youngest head coach in the NFL, will be supplanting one of the greatest head coaches in NFL history. He will be doing so without a sensible answer at quarterback, and with a roster completely perforated by years of personnel neglect. Gone is one of the greatest game-planners in the sport, who may have also made his patchwork quilt of defensive talent look better than they were.
The hire runs counterintuitively to the Patriots’ thought process post–Tom Brady. Instead of directly replacing Brady, the franchise brought in Cam Newton as a kind of battering ram through the year of lofty expectations and comparisons. Newton had a gregarious personality and was seemingly unfazed by the idea of walking into Gillette Stadium a few months after the exit of a legend (and, I’m sure, there was probably part of Newton who thought himself a better player, anyway).
This time, Kraft is exposing his hire to the most violent winds imaginable. At an age when all of us are still discovering who we are, Mayo will have to decide what parts of his former mentor he will take with him, and which parts will need discarding. For an entire building conditioned under one mantra for more than two decades, Mayo must be the one to throw open the windows and ventilate.
And, of course, it could work. Even though Belichick’s personal touch was rarely discussed and, I feel, an underrated part of his legacy, Mayo is going to be a completely new force of energy. He is going to relate to players differently. And, perhaps, they will respond differently. This most recent iteration of the Patriots felt so un-Belichick-ian. Clumsy. Turnover prone. Sloppy.
Kraft believes the solution has been in-house all along. Kraft decided to forego the interview process. Kraft will now be the buffer between Mayo and what lies ahead. Kraft moved on from Belichick to make it happen.
Now, we will learn more about the owner of the Patriots in a few short seasons than we have throughout an entire dynasty.
