New Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo does not want to denigrate the memory of Bill Belichick.
Mayo, who played for Belichick as a linebacker and later worked under him, spoke to reporters on Wednesday after comments by himself and New England’s director of scouting, Eliot Wolf, were construed as shots at the former Patriots head coach.
“It’s going to be different, but at the same time I would say Bill did a great job for a long period of time,” Mayo said, as covered by ESPN. “I don’t want you [in the media] to take this as ‘because we’re changing, there are shots toward the previous regime.’
“In saying that, we will do it differently and it will feel different. But at the end of the day, we would like to replicate the success that the prior regime has had. I learned a lot from Bill and also his staff. Now we’ll see what this chapter looks like in the franchise.”
Wolf, who despite not having the title of general manager is by all appearances the new leader of the Patriots’ front office, made particularly pointed comments that seemed like a jab at Belichick, saying the franchise would have an “open, kind of less hard-ass type vibe in the building.”
“We’re really excited to kind of get going here and try to help improve the team and get us back to respectability,” Wolf, who is entering his fifth season in the Patriots organization, said earlier this week.
He said that he would tell prospective free agents that “this is a new program, and we’re headed in the right direction.”
“It’s a new era,” Wolf, the son of legendary former Packers executive Ron Wolf, continued.
“We have leadership with Jerod Mayo that is going to be tremendous. He’s just an unbelievable leader and developer of people. And I think that as we move forward with a new offense and defense, it’s going to be pretty special and exciting here.”
Mayo, meanwhile, had said that he “[doesn’t] like echo chambers” and that he wanted to “knock down silos and collaborate,” according to NBC Sports Boston.
While Belichick won six Super Bowl championships in his 24 seasons as Patriots head coach, his split with the organization was years in the making.
Clearly, the franchise is walking a tightrope between honoring Belichick’s accomplishments in aggregate, while trying to move forward in a manner that is more collegial than how Belichick presided over the team, especially in recent years.