A few thoughts from someone who is invested in the Pats’ success but less worked up about all this:
1) I think we make too much of the “Kraft ego play” aspect of the Mayo hire. Mayo may not be the right guy. It’s fair to wonder whether he should’ve done an external search. But Kraft approached this a lot like a family business which is often based on relationships, trust and feel. Also, I’m not exactly sure Kraft was wrong when he described Bill as a “pain in the tuchus” – especially after he chose Bill over Brady and things began to go sideways.
2) Mayo, to put it simply, has a lot on his plate. Taking over for a legend. Picking through a barren roster. Developing a rookie franchise QB. Learning how to do head coaching things like execute in-game strategy, speak on behalf of the team (in a town used to getting nothing from their HC’s press conferences). Evolve a team culture that had grown stale and showed diminishing returns (and made a lot of mistakes as well, see: 2023 special teams). That’s … a lot.
Now you can argue that some of that was a choice Mayo and Wolf (and the Krafts) made. You could make the case that they’d have been better off with a veteran coach taking over who had some of this in place already. But my guess is that it wouldn’t have been a Pete Carroll-level guy. It would’ve more likely been a Vic Fangio-type retread who maybe wouldn’t be making gaffes in front of the media but wouldn’t necessarily be getting much more out of this roster than Mayo – and possibly would be alienating Maye.
3) Maye continues to really improve. I get the handwringing over whether Mayo coaching will “waste” Maye’s rookie contract years. But again: hitting on this pick—and knowing that they hit on this pick—was the single most important thing this season. Mayo may have literally nothing to do with it, I don’t know. But Maye’s development could not be going better and that sets this team up well for the coming offseason – with FA’s who see a guy they want to play with and with coaches who see a guy they can imagine
doing snow angels with one day.
Either way, I’m not losing my mind of the current State of the Mayo. Robert Kraft may be older and Jonathan may lack the old man’s personal touch. But this kind of two steps forward, two or three steps backward type season is almost exactly what I expected going in to the year and the year after we moved on from Bill. And given the choice I’d much rather be singing Maye’s praises and handwringing over the coach than vice versa.