Jerod Mayo was fired this week after just one season as head coach of the New England Patriots, and a new report has shed some light on what led to the team’s surprising decision.
Chad Graff of The Athletic published a story on Wednesday that details some of the issues Mayo had with his transition from defensive assistant to head coach in New England. One of Graff’s sources described an unusual situation during a team flight back after a Patriots loss late in the season.
After the Patriots lost 30-17 to the Arizona Cardinals in Week 15, Mayo reportedly carried himself more like a player than a coach on the plane ride back to Massachusetts. Mayo left his spot near the front of the plane and went to play cards with some players. Other Patriots coaches were watching film at the time.
“Look, there are a lot of ways to do the job,” a source who was on the flight told Graff. “It’s not that Jerod’s was definitely wrong. But I can’t say I’ve seen that before.”
One of the mistakes Mayo might have made during his brief tenure in charge of the Patriots was trying to be too much of a players’ coach. The former linebacker seemed determine to do things differently from Bill Belichick, and that probably hurt him in some instances.
There was no better example of that than in Week 17, when Mayo told reporters that Rhamondre Stevenson was not going to start because of the running back’s ball security issues. Stevenson then started anyway, which was a bad look for Mayo. Graff said that was just one instance where Mayo “struggled with discipline and how to enforce it.”
If there was one loss that sealed Mayo’s fate, it was probably that loss to Arizona. That was the same game where Mayo infamously threw his offensive coordinator under the bus. Patriots owners Robert and Jonathan Kraft also went viral during the loss after a video showed them looking disgusted. If Mayo was playing cards on the team flight after all of that, it probably did not help him make a strong case to keep his job.
