ROBERT KRAFT AND JEROD MAYO PRESS CONFERENCE
January 17, 2024
RKK: Good afternoon, everyone. It’s been nearly a quarter of a century since we announced a new head coach. Today, I’m honored to introduce you to the 15th head coach of the New England Patriots, Jerod Mayo. It’s an honor to share this announcement with Jerod’s family, friends, and mentors, who have played a significant role in shaping the man and coach he is today.
I first met Jerod in 2008 when we drafted him 10th overall out of the University of Tennessee. From the moment he stepped onto the field, he made an impact not only on the team but also on me. As a rookie linebacker, he started every game, recording 139 tackles and helping us to an 11-5 record. He was named Associated Press Defensive Rookie of the Year and immediately stepped into a leadership role, being voted a team captain in just his second year.
During his playing days, Jerod was a student of the game who loved to watch film and was often described by his coaches and teammates as another coach on the field. After he retired during the 2015 season, he left football to pursue a successful career in business with Optum. It was no surprise to see him return to the Patriots on the coaching staff in 2019.
Football is Jerod’s true passion. I believe coaching was always his destiny. His credentials garner respect, and he relates beautifully to the players. He has been on the coaching staff for five seasons, and each year his role has grown on the defense, which has now been ranked in the top 10 in the league in the four seasons he has coached them. His dedication, strategic acumen, and ability to inspire players have been evident.
On the field, Jerod is a man of faith, has a good heart, and he’s often described as a leader of men, something I have been proud to witness firsthand. While I’ve known Jerod for nearly 16 years, the week we spent together in the Holy Land in 2019 really helped strengthen my convictions about how special Jerod is as a person and how capable I thought he would be as a head coach in this league.
There have been many moments in my life that other people couldn’t understand, but it was the right decision for me. I did that when I first met Myra. I did that when I first met Dana. I had that same conviction when I hired Bill Belichick, a decision that many questioned at the time, and told me I was making a major error. I have done that with business decisions throughout my career, and with Jerod, I knew while observing him in Israel, he was the right person to be the next head coach of the New England Patriots. That decision has only strengthened as I’ve observed him over the last five years.
I’ve learned to trust my instincts throughout my career, and I trust that Jerod is the right person to lead the Patriots back to championship-level contention and long-term success. It is with great excitement and pleasure that I introduce the next Patriots head coach, Jerod Mayo.
JM: Thank you, Thunder. I appreciate your kind words and the opportunity to lead this historic franchise.
I want to thank my family, first and foremost. I know one thing that Thunder talked about was that I had always been a coach in his mind. I would say I’m a huge believer in just developing people, whether it’s on or off the football field, in the media world, or in business. My calling is to be a teacher and to develop people and help them see pretty much what they don’t want to see but need to see, so my job has always been—that is my calling.
Becoming a Patriot has never really felt like a job. When I first got here in 2008, I was a first-round draft pick. 2007, you know the season 2007, don’t worry about that one. But I came into an organization where the culture was established, the people—not only the players but the people that worked around the building—and I was like, man, maybe I’m the missing piece. Maybe I’m the missing piece.
I was drafted in 2008, and the first game of the season, Tom Brady gets hurt. He’s out for the year. Most people wrote us off that season, but that’s when I really had an opportunity to see the culture at work. Many people look at culture as a retrospective way of either validating success or validating a losing season. I would say here the culture starts at the top. Mr. Kraft and the family, it starts at the top. But it also has to permeate throughout the organization, and I’ve always tried to carry that flag for the Kraft family.
As he’s told you, look, they win a lot. They win a lot, and I love being here. I took a break; I went to Optum for about four years, and I came back. One thing I came back with, I learned a lot at Optum. Larry Renfrow, Mike Matteo, those guys, I learned a lot about diversity, about diversity and inclusion. You’d better believe being the first Black coach here in New England means a lot to me. But those guys taught me you have to take ideas from other people, Black, white, green, yellow. Really doesn’t matter. Old, young. One thing you’ll notice about me in our interaction as we continue to go, is I don’t like echo chambers. I want people around me that are going to question my ideas or yes question the way we have done things in the past because realistically this game is a lot different than when I was drafted in 2008.
At the same time, that’s why I try to spend so much time developing young men and young women. I don’t want to teach them what to think; I want to teach them how to think. Once we get to that point, I think we can get back to where we need to be, at the top.
I’m an open book. I’m honored. I’m ready to go. I’m excited to be the next head coach of the Patriots.
Q: Robert, there’s going to come a time when you have to turn in a draft card and make a pick official or make a signing official. Who will have the final say on those decisions?
RKK: Well, this is a day we want to celebrate Jerod taking this position. We have a lot of people internally who have had a chance to train and learn under the greatest coach of all time and a man whose football intellect is very special. In the short-term, we’re looking for collaboration. Our team has a tremendous opportunity to position itself right, given our salary cap space, and we’ve never drafted—in my 30 years of ownership, we’ve never been drafting as low as we’re drafting. We’re counting on our internal people whom we’re still learning and evaluating. So, we’re going to let that evolve and develop, and before the key decisions have to be made, we will appoint someone. At the same time, we’ll probably start doing interviews and looking at people from the outside. But my bias has always been, in all our family companies, to try to develop a culture from within where we understand one another.
I’ll just give you a little factoid. In the 30 years that we’ve owned the team, today—so it’s really 31—this is the third coach that our family has hired. In that period, there have been 244 coaches hired in the NFL, which means an average of roughly eight coaches per team, which means there’s a turnover every three and a half years. We like to get continuity in our company, get the most competent people, and then try to build stability, and so before we just rush and hire people, we want to understand what we have internally. It’s a long answer, but an important question.
Q: Jerod, it’s been reported in recent days you’ve set up interviews for the defensive coordinator position and special teams coordinator position. I’m curious if you’ll open a search for an offensive coordinator, and if so, what traits and experience will you prioritize?
JM: That’s a great question. I would say just like Thunder alluded to, everything is still under consideration. Obviously, the staff that I’ve been working with isn’t the staff that I have chosen, but everything is under evaluation. One thing I would say with all of my coaches, the number one thing is developing people, and with this generation—back when I first started playing, most of the time Coach would say something and guys would do it. I think with this generation, you have to show them that you care about them before you get into competency as far as Xs and Os are concerned. That’s one thing I feel like with all my coaches, they should know the players. They should know their room better than I do. They’re closer. They’re closer to those guys, and they have that day-to-day interaction. But to me, whether we’re talking offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special teams coordinator, all that stuff is under eval, and my number one thing is I want to bring in developers.
Q: Jerod, just a thought following that up. Do you plan to officially name an offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, special teams coordinator, and what’s your vision of what you want from this people both offensively and what we’ve seen from you defensively, and will the Belichicks remain on the staff?
JM: That’s like four questions in one. The first one was what? Break it down.
Q: Will you officially name coordinators?
JM: I think it’s important. I think titles are important, and I know—no knock to Coach Belichick who has been a huge mentor to me over the years as a player and as a colleague, what I would say is I believe titles are important outward-looking, but as far as in the building, I don’t care what your title is. It’s what’s your job, what value do you bring to the organization. I think that’s the most important thing. Sometimes I think in business, in sports, people get caught up in titles, but I also understand the other side. If you want to continue to get promoted, people have to know exactly what you do. But like I said earlier, inside, I don’t care what your title is. I care about what you bring to the organization, how you help our players get better. That’s the most important thing.