Patriots Country

What is the Argument for Patriots Keeping Jerod Mayo?

How much of an argument is there for the New England Patriots to bring back Jerod Mayo as their head coach for the 2025 NFL season?
Dec 15, 2024; Glendale, Arizona, USA; New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Dec 15, 2024; Glendale, Arizona, USA; New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

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The New England Patriots will have a rather critical decision to make at the end of the season: keep Jerod Mayo, or fire him?

Mayo is in his first year as Patriots head coach, and the team has gone just 3-11 under his leadership. While the record alone is enough to make one question Mayo, that isn't the primary reason why New England may be considering parting ways with him.

It's everything else.

It's Mayo's strange in-game decisions. It's his inability to curb his tongue in postgame interviews. It's a wide swath of the fan base ready to give up on Mayo before the 2024 campaign has even concluded.

So, what exactly is the argument for the Pats keeping Mayo other than the usual platitude of him being a rookie head coach who needs more time?

Mayo has to give the Patriots a reason to retain him, and to be perfectly honest, he hasn't been doing that.

New England entered the season with one of the worst rosters in football. Everyone knows that. But Mayo isn't doing anything to combat that. He also isn't learning from his mistakes.

How many times is Mayo going to say the wrong thing or place the blame somewhere else before he repents and rights his errors? We've seen it multiple times throughout the year, and it hasn't gotten any better.

The Pats didn't even really go through any sort of due process when it came to hiring a coach following Bill Belichick's departure. They had simply earmarked Mayo as the guy to succeed Belichick, and here we are.

But is Robert Kraft going to realize that he may have made a mistake and start fresh after the season?

Typically, everyone would say that a coach deserves more than one year to prove himself, especially with a roster as barren as New England's.

But it's also rare that we see a first-year coach screw up this much.

There is no question that the Patriots need to supply Mayo with more talent. That much is true. But it's beginning to look like Mayo's most prominent issues may be unfixable.

If Mayo continues refusing to look at himself in the mirror, Kraft may have no choice but to start all over again.

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Matthew Schmidt
MATTHEW SCHMIDT

Matthew Schmidt is a sportswriter who covers NFL, MLB, NBA and college football and basketball. He has been writing professionally since 2011 and has also worked for Bleacher Report, FanRag Sports, ClutchPoints, NFLAnalysis.net and NBAAnalysis.net. He was born and raised in New Jersey and has a rather eclectic group of favorite teams: the Boston Celtics, New York Giants and Miami Marlins.