- Joined
- Aug 27, 2006
- Messages
- 9,929
- Reaction score
- 13,224
I for one have greatly underestimated him. Sounds like the next head coach for sure. And a renaissance man.
theathletic.com
A few excerpts for those who prefer beer over good journalism (you guys really should subscribe; best money I've spent following sports):
-------------------
“Some people, I don’t know what it is, have that it factor. And he’s got it,” said Brandon Spikes, a former teammate. “He makes everyone around him better. He’s a perfect human being. If I had a son, I’d want him to be just like Jerod Mayo.”
------------------
Wednesdays during the NFL season are when players learn that week’s game plan. For the first few weeks of his rookie season, Spikes couldn’t figure out how Mayo knew the game plan by the time Spikes showed up at 7:30 a.m.
Finally, he asked. “Oh,” Mayo responded, “I sit in on the coaching staff’s 6 a.m. meeting.”
Spikes was floored. Players don’t sit in on meetings with coaches.
“I’m not lying,” Spikes said. “He was in the staff meetings. For real.”
“I thought I loved the game — like really loved it,” Spikes said. “And then I met Jerod and Tom. And then I was like, OK, maybe I just really like it. I don’t love it like them. They just eat and sleep football.”
--------------------
Ninkovich arrived in New England before that 2009 season as a castoff who had only played in eight NFL games over the last three seasons. The first player who introduced himself was Mayo, who offered thoughts on the playbook and simple advice like where to get lunch. Ninkovich was impressed, but, somewhat embarrassingly, didn’t know anything about Mayo. So he asked the defending Defensive Rookie of the Year how long he’d been in the NFL.
“I assumed this was like his eighth year,” Ninkovich said. “He just had that presence about him. I thought he was a veteran because of how he carried himself.”
Ninkovic was so impressed with Mayo that he moved in next door on Neff Drive in Foxboro. They’d play “FIFA” — Mayo usually won — and talk football late into the night. For some players, reaching the NFL means football becoming really difficult for the first time. The schemes are more complex, the checks are more important and everything happens more quickly.
When Ninkovich didn’t understand something, he just asked Mayo, and Mayo always had the answer.
“With his mind and the knowledge he has, it was just a given that he’d get into coaching because it’s teaching,” Ninkovich said. “As far as on-field quickness, he is the smartest guy that I had ever been around. His ability to decipher formations and bark out calls and get people lined up — he was by far the fastest and best that I’ve ever been around.”
---------------
Spikes arrived in New England as a second-round pick in 2010. He wanted to make a good impression, so for the first few months, he came into the team’s facility well before his first meeting. And yet every time he pulled into the parking lot, he saw Mayo’s car already there, often next to Brady’s — the two early birds.
The next day, Spikes got to the facility even earlier, determined to beat Mayo into the building. Eventually, he gave it up. It never happened.
“When they talk of the ‘Patriot Way,’ I think of Jerod Mayo,” Spikes said. “That guy never left for vacations in the offseason. He was the first one in the building and the last one out.”
Mayo made teammates laugh with a Belichick impression they swore was perfect. But they also leaned on him for information, occasionally too intimidated to ask Belichick about the defensive game plan.
“Even though we were playing next to each other, Jerod was my coach,” Spikes said. “I knew I could go to him and get the details for what we were trying to get done, and he could deliver it to me just as Belichick would. Even as a player, he was already a coach.”
------------------
Mukunda, the Harvard fellow whose research has focused on how organizations select high-impact leaders, was asked by a mutual friend to meet with Mayo toward the end of his playing career.
Mukunda didn’t know much about Mayo, but he figured the meeting was to help walk a professional athlete through some personal finance decisions. They got a drink at Sip Wine Bar near Boston Common. Mukunda thought it was going to be a 30-minute talk. They stayed for three hours, with Mayo walking him through decisions he’d already made as an angel investor.
“By the end, I was like, ‘Wait, can I invest with you?’” Mukunda said.
-----------------
“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.
--------------
When Mayo suffered a season-ending injury toward the end of his playing career, he came into the facility and spent long days breaking down games with Belichick’s son, Steve, then a defensive coaching assistant. The two grew close and now serve as de facto co-defensive coordinators even though neither holds the official title.
Perhaps all of that helps explain why Mayo might be the perfect candidate to fill the massive shoes the elder Belichick will one day leave vacant in New England.
Ownership could feel secure handing the reins over to someone they know so well and respect so much. Belichick could feel proud handing over all he’s built to someone he drafted, developed and taught how to coach.
“He’s Bill Belichick 2.0,” Spikes said. “They speak the same language.”
Nothing has been promised. Belichick could continue chalking up wins and coaching for many more years. Mayo could get an offer elsewhere that he can’t turn down. Maybe opinions change. But for now, it’s clear the Krafts want to keep him close.
“They know what they have,” Ninkovich said. “So why let that leave if you can keep that within the organization?”
‘He’s Bill Belichick 2.0’: Could Jerod Mayo become the next Patriots coach?
Ownership thinks highly of him. Former teammates revere him. Colleagues praise him. Could the former "teacher's pet" replace a legend?
theathletic.com
A few excerpts for those who prefer beer over good journalism (you guys really should subscribe; best money I've spent following sports):
-------------------
“Some people, I don’t know what it is, have that it factor. And he’s got it,” said Brandon Spikes, a former teammate. “He makes everyone around him better. He’s a perfect human being. If I had a son, I’d want him to be just like Jerod Mayo.”
------------------
Wednesdays during the NFL season are when players learn that week’s game plan. For the first few weeks of his rookie season, Spikes couldn’t figure out how Mayo knew the game plan by the time Spikes showed up at 7:30 a.m.
Finally, he asked. “Oh,” Mayo responded, “I sit in on the coaching staff’s 6 a.m. meeting.”
Spikes was floored. Players don’t sit in on meetings with coaches.
“I’m not lying,” Spikes said. “He was in the staff meetings. For real.”
“I thought I loved the game — like really loved it,” Spikes said. “And then I met Jerod and Tom. And then I was like, OK, maybe I just really like it. I don’t love it like them. They just eat and sleep football.”
--------------------
Ninkovich arrived in New England before that 2009 season as a castoff who had only played in eight NFL games over the last three seasons. The first player who introduced himself was Mayo, who offered thoughts on the playbook and simple advice like where to get lunch. Ninkovich was impressed, but, somewhat embarrassingly, didn’t know anything about Mayo. So he asked the defending Defensive Rookie of the Year how long he’d been in the NFL.
“I assumed this was like his eighth year,” Ninkovich said. “He just had that presence about him. I thought he was a veteran because of how he carried himself.”
Ninkovic was so impressed with Mayo that he moved in next door on Neff Drive in Foxboro. They’d play “FIFA” — Mayo usually won — and talk football late into the night. For some players, reaching the NFL means football becoming really difficult for the first time. The schemes are more complex, the checks are more important and everything happens more quickly.
When Ninkovich didn’t understand something, he just asked Mayo, and Mayo always had the answer.
“With his mind and the knowledge he has, it was just a given that he’d get into coaching because it’s teaching,” Ninkovich said. “As far as on-field quickness, he is the smartest guy that I had ever been around. His ability to decipher formations and bark out calls and get people lined up — he was by far the fastest and best that I’ve ever been around.”
---------------
Spikes arrived in New England as a second-round pick in 2010. He wanted to make a good impression, so for the first few months, he came into the team’s facility well before his first meeting. And yet every time he pulled into the parking lot, he saw Mayo’s car already there, often next to Brady’s — the two early birds.
The next day, Spikes got to the facility even earlier, determined to beat Mayo into the building. Eventually, he gave it up. It never happened.
“When they talk of the ‘Patriot Way,’ I think of Jerod Mayo,” Spikes said. “That guy never left for vacations in the offseason. He was the first one in the building and the last one out.”
Mayo made teammates laugh with a Belichick impression they swore was perfect. But they also leaned on him for information, occasionally too intimidated to ask Belichick about the defensive game plan.
“Even though we were playing next to each other, Jerod was my coach,” Spikes said. “I knew I could go to him and get the details for what we were trying to get done, and he could deliver it to me just as Belichick would. Even as a player, he was already a coach.”
------------------
Mukunda, the Harvard fellow whose research has focused on how organizations select high-impact leaders, was asked by a mutual friend to meet with Mayo toward the end of his playing career.
Mukunda didn’t know much about Mayo, but he figured the meeting was to help walk a professional athlete through some personal finance decisions. They got a drink at Sip Wine Bar near Boston Common. Mukunda thought it was going to be a 30-minute talk. They stayed for three hours, with Mayo walking him through decisions he’d already made as an angel investor.
“By the end, I was like, ‘Wait, can I invest with you?’” Mukunda said.
-----------------
“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.
--------------
When Mayo suffered a season-ending injury toward the end of his playing career, he came into the facility and spent long days breaking down games with Belichick’s son, Steve, then a defensive coaching assistant. The two grew close and now serve as de facto co-defensive coordinators even though neither holds the official title.
Perhaps all of that helps explain why Mayo might be the perfect candidate to fill the massive shoes the elder Belichick will one day leave vacant in New England.
Ownership could feel secure handing the reins over to someone they know so well and respect so much. Belichick could feel proud handing over all he’s built to someone he drafted, developed and taught how to coach.
“He’s Bill Belichick 2.0,” Spikes said. “They speak the same language.”
Nothing has been promised. Belichick could continue chalking up wins and coaching for many more years. Mayo could get an offer elsewhere that he can’t turn down. Maybe opinions change. But for now, it’s clear the Krafts want to keep him close.
“They know what they have,” Ninkovich said. “So why let that leave if you can keep that within the organization?”
