Can continuing to go backward ever be considered progress? In a sense, the New England Patriots made progress last Sunday in having a much more competitive performance against the Super Bowl-contending Buffalo Bills than anyone expected. However, the end result was still a 24-21 loss, the twelfth of New England’s season. For Patriots fans, it’s hard to not feel bitter about the multiple things that went wrong: costly turnovers and questionable play calling from head coach Jerod Mayo.
Speculation around Mayo’s job has been all over the place amid New England’s five-gaming losing streak. In his latest for the Boston Sports Journal, writer Greg Bedard all but practically said to the Krafts that they should fire Mayo. Recent reports, following the close game against Buffalo, seem to indicate that the front office is leaning toward keeping the rookie head coach for at least one more season, but there still remains the possibility that a bad showing in the last two weeks could force the Patriots to change course.
In my final installment of the Patriots autopsy series, I’m going to examine Mayo’s performance as a head coach. While there are multiple elements of being a head coach that I can’t quantify or comment on, what I’m going to focus on instead is game management – where are situations that Mayo has thrived or failed in? After that, I’ll bring up other instances of rookie head coaches, compare their circumstances to Mayo, and then conclude by returning to the heart of this column: has Mayo done enough to deserve another chance as head coach?
Game Management
It’s not Mayo’s fault that he has to follow up arguably the greatest game manager in league history, but Mayo’s lack of situational knowledge and attention to detail has made him negatively stand out from his predecessor, whose expertise in this area practically carried the Patriots in years past. Meanwhile, the 2024 team has totally struggled in one-possession games (2-6), with many losses coming down to questionable decisions from Mayo and the coaching staff. To examine what’s gone wrong, I looked at each of these eight games and pointed out the relevant “game-losing” moves, even including ones in which the Patriots won.
The first game-losing move Mayo arguably made was late in Week 1 against the Bengals: when on fourth-and-two from the Bengals 50, then-quarterback Jacoby Brissett took an intentional delay of game penalty to set up a punt from the Patriots 45. Most research on short fourth down conversions suggests that teams should overwhelmingly go for it more often than not, but this is a bad decision in the context of a game where New England had run all over the opposition. Though the defense had consistently stifled the Bengals by this point of the game, the odds were far more in the Patriots favor to increase their chances of winning by getting two yards and running out more of the clock than punting the ball back to Cincinnati. It’s also worth noting that the Patriots punted while up only six points: a situation that, funnily enough, is less favorable than if they were merely up three points. Though not entirely intuitive, teams that need a touchdown to tie or take the lead in a game typically play far more aggressive and to their chances of winning a game than ones that can extend the game with a field goal. The decision ended up not biting Mayo and the Patriots, but it’s an early indicator of his conservative nature as a coach.
Patriots fans were given another red flag of sorts at the end of the first half in Week 2’s heart-breaker against the Seahawks. In this situation, Mayo and New England did something agonizingly frustrating: with 97 seconds left in the half, and Seattle having all three timeouts, the Patriots run the ball, burning 38 seconds, and then call a pass play on second-and-eight. It falls incomplete, stopping the clock and setting up a third-and-eight where the Seahawks know New England has to throw and has all three of its timeouts. Another incomplete pass, and the Patriots punt back to Geno Smith, who would lead Seattle to a field goal in 35 seconds. It ended up playing a large role in extending the game to overtime; New England’s decision to punt on another fourth-and-short at the Patriots 39 to give the ball back to a red-hot Smith was the final nail in the coffin.
Not content with blowing fourth down opportunities or understanding how to eliminate the threat of the opposition’s timeouts, Mayo and New England once again pulled off the maddening run-pass-pass sequence against the Tyler Huntley-led Miami Dolphins a few weeks later. With one minute and 50 seconds to end the half, the Patriots successfully ran the ball for eight yards, only to then throw two incomplete passes and punt the ball back to Miami on New England’s 44. Were it not for a strange aborted snap by the opposition, the Patriots may as well have spotted Miami three points – the Dolphins had all three of their timeouts too. Similar to the Bengals game, the lack of situational awareness at the end of the first half ended up not mattering very much, but it demonstrated, once again, New England’s penchant for giving free opportunities to opponents. You could say the same for the Patriots neither attempting a field goal from the Miami 43 on fourth-and-8 nor going for it – instead choosing to punt the ball to the Dolphins. They ended up burning more than seven minutes off the clock in what would be the game-winning drive. To add insult to injury, Miami used one timeout the entire game: on defense before a got-to-have-it fourth-and-ten for New England’s last drive.
To give credit where credit is due, the Patriots seemingly learned from its end-of-half series of errors by the time of their rematch against the New York Jets. But rather than making adjustments that factored in the opponent’s resources, New England decided to play possum at halftime. Instead of attempting to drive down the field with a minute and 51 seconds left, the Patriots ran two consecutive running plays and then ran a quarterback run for no good reason other than to end the half. I was at this game – every single fan around me booed. The Jets had no timeouts and no leverage over New England here; this was straight up leaving potential points off the board. Even though the Patriots won the game 25-22, they would have been in far better position had they actually tried to attack; choosing to go into the half while kicking the ball back to New York to begin the third quarter made no sense and would have lost New England the game had they played a competent team.
The follow-up game to the Tennessee Titans had one decision that everyone in Patriots media discussed to death: Mayo’s decision to kick an extra point to send the team to overtime rather than going for two points to win. While this was indeed controversial, as well as indicative of New England’s pattern of not capitalizing on game-winning opportunities, it’s easy to forget that the Patriots also had bizarrely decided to kick (and drive) against the wind in overtime as well. Longtime fans of New England have a very obvious data point for another coach who knew the value of such an external factor.
Not long after this game, the Patriots found themselves in the position of a potential comeback against the Los Angeles Rams, down 28-19 early in the fourth quarter following a touchdown. Perhaps motivated by the superficial criticism of his decision to go for two in a blowout loss against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Mayo had New England attempt an extra point rather than go for two, presumably to save the two-pointer for later in the game. Based on the basic two-point chart, let alone more advanced analytics (which suggest a more case-by-case approach that doesn’t quite apply to the Rams game), this was a blunder. When down by multiple possessions late in a game, a team has to take more risks and play aggressively when there is still time left to make up for mistakes. Delaying a ‘risky’ decision until there’s little time left in the game decreases its odds of success and creates a bigger punishment for failing to convert. To add insult to injury, the Patriots extra point attempt ended up being blocked, leaving the team with a nine-point deficit anyway and little time. Amazingly, New England was still in a position to win the game while down six points despite this blunder, but had it gone for two and succeeded, it could have potentially been in a more favorable spot (the poor interception aside).
In the match against the Indianapolis Colts, the Patriots practically out-performed the opposition in every metric short of the actual result itself. There’s multiple situations in this game where New England had me yelling out loud in disbelief. There’s the shocking deployment of Marty-Ball in the team’s second-to-last drive of the game. There’s the lack of pressure on Indianapolis to use its timeouts at the end of the first-half (a third instance of the Patriots trying to have it both ways with its halftime strategy). There’s the failure to properly call timeouts at all in the last two minutes of the game – the only one coming on a fourth-and-three that determined the game – and leaving the Patriots no time left to move down the field for a more effective field goal. If you want, there’s even a pointless challenge that Mayo could have had backfire on him: a third-and-one rush for one yard that was initially ruled for no gain. To make matters worse, New England also failed to go for two while up one point, instead kicking an extra point for a meaningless two-point lead rather than understanding that a three-point lead is more valuable. It ended up evening out, as the Patriots went for two later in the game, but as I mentioned before, you’d want to do this earlier, with more time to make up for any errors.
It’s the close loss against the Bills, however, which convinced me that Mayo would rather lose doing things his way than changing anything. This was yet another game decided by the margins, in which inefficient coaching decisions played a role. To give Mayo props, there was a successful fake punt early in the game on fourth-and-short, but what he’d end up doing later in the game was truly unforgivable: down ten points and having about eight minutes left in the game, Mayo rolled out the punting unit to kick the ball back to Josh Allen instead of trying to convert a fourth-and-five around midfield. According to Ben Baldwin’s fourth-down bot, it ranked in the 95th percentile of most cowardly punts in recorded history.
Of course, a stray conservative decision on fourth-downs, here and there, would not be disqualifying. Some of the best coaches in the world make up for risk-averse tendencies here with maximizing their own timeouts, pressure the opponent into using their own timeouts, and capitalizing on key situations in the game. Unfortunately, none of these elements are stray weak areas for New England. As we can see from how they’ve contributed to close losses, they are foundational issues with Mayo’s coaching – mistakes that he’s shown no interest in addressing.
What Has It Taken For Other Unsuccessful Rookie HCs to Get Fired?
In preparation for this column, I looked at every rookie head coach I could find since 2000. From what I could gather from Pro Football Reference, only five of them have ever been fired either after their first season or during it: Nathaniel Hackett with the 2022 Broncos, Urban Meyer with the 2021 Jaguars, Steve Wilks with the 2018 Cardinals, Rod Chudzinski with the 2013 Browns, and Cam Cameron with the 2007 Dolphins. There’s also a sixth case of a head coach who didn’t last beyond his rookie season – Bobby Petrino with the 2007 Falcons, who quit mid-season to accept a college job; for the purpose of our analysis, he is not relevant.
| Year and Coach | Record in Prior Year | Final Record | Net Shift in Wins |
| 2022 Nathaniel Hackett | 7-10 | 4-11 | -3 |
| 2021 Urban Meyer | 1-15 | 2-11 | +1 |
| 2018 Steve Wilks | 8-8 | 3-13 | -5 |
| 2013 Rod Chudzinski | 5-11 | 4-12 | -1 |
| 2007 Cam Cameron | 6-10 | 1-15 | -5 |
Although each of these cases of head coaches had fairly different paths to losing their jobs, there’s many recurring themes here. For starters, they all had well below losing records, not too dissimilar from Mayo. All, except for Meyer, whose firing mostly had to do with the toxic environment he led, had noticeable declines in team performances from the previous year before they were brought in.
The most interesting factor for each of these coaches had to do with previously established plans at quarterback falling under jeopardy during their tenures. Hackett’s relationship with Russell Wilson notoriously soured over time, as did Meyer’s with then-rookie Trevor Lawrence. In Wilks’ case, not only did his defensive prowess translate to total failure on that end in Arizona – the situation around recent first-round pick Josh Rosen got bad enough for the Cardinals to both fire Wilks and move on from Rosen. For Chudzinski, he and similarly newly hired general manager Michael Lombardi were in a situation led by first-full-time season from new owner Jimmy Haslam, as well as nearing the end of the Brandon Weeden era for Browns starters. Lastly, with Cameron, the Dolphins had made an off-season trade for Trent Green, only for Green to disappoint and suffer a horrific concussion that ended his season early.
To bring this back to the current Patriots and Mayo, the plan at quarterback for New England hasn’t gone totally belly up, given how its rookie has performed so far. With that said though, the current organization and Mayo are honestly not too far off from the disastrous situations facing coaches and franchises that parted after a year. Like Hackett (3-8 in one-possession games in 2022), Mayo has consistently struggled with game management situations. Similar to Wilks, Mayo has been an utter disappointment as a defensive coach. He’s not anywhere near as toxic as Meyer, but Mayo’s inability to handle the press and his constant walking back of critical comments toward his players does raise questions about his messaging and leadership.
In all honesty, I don’t know if Mayo is realistically as worthy of firing as some of these coaches. I’m fairly positive that he hasn’t reached Meyer levels of being so disastrous that the situation is unsalvageable, but he shares enough in common with someone like Hackett and Wilks to where I’m skeptical that he has cleared the bar for a second season. On that note though, are there any success cases for rookie head coaches who have turned it around with additional chances?
How Have Other Rookie HCs Fared Since Struggling Rookie Seasons?
For the next part of my column, I decided to examine other rookie head coaches with four wins or fewer in their respective debut seasons. After that, I then examined how the rest of their tenures went before their respective departures. From what I could father, there were about five coaches whom I would have broadly considered “successes” in their times with their team.
| Year and Coach | Year 1 | Final Record with Team | Win % |
| 2001 Marty Mornhinweg | 2-14 | 5-27 | 15.63% |
| 2005 Mike Nolan | 4-12 | 8-37 | 17.78% |
| 2007 Lane Kiffin | 4-12 | 5-15 | 25.00% |
| 2009 Steve Spagnuolo | 1-15 | 10-38 | 20.83% |
| 2006 Rod Marinelli | 3-13 | 10-38 | 20.83% |
| 2013 Gus Bradley | 4-12 | 14-48 | 26.92% |
| 2022 Matt Eberflus | 3-14 | 14-32 | 30.43% |
| 2009 Raheem Morris | 3-13 | 17-31 | 35.42% |
| 2009 Jim Schwartz | 2-14 | 29-51 | 36.25% |
| 2021 Robert Saleh | 4-13 | 20-33 | 37.74% |
| 2011 Leslie Frazier | 3-3* | 21-32-1 | 38.89% |
| 2014 Jay Gruden | 4-12 | 35-49-1 | 41.18% |
| 2019 Zac Taylor | 2-14 | 41-38-1 | 51.25% |
| 2021 Dan Campbell | 3-13-1* | 33-28-1 | 63.46% |
NOTE: This analysis deliberately excludes current Titans head coach Brian Callahan and current Panthers head coach Dave Canales. Their own job status remains uncertain for the long-term future.
In total, these coaches had nine playoff wins, but they all came under Taylor and Campbell: the two best case scenarios for struggling rookie head coaches. The only other coaches to make the playoffs at all were Schwartz, Franzier, and Gruden. Combined, this group of coaches had a record of 262-497-4 – making up a 34.33 percent win rate. Although there’s much more context to be analyzed when it comes to assessing these coaches’ tenures, we can safely say that on average, struggling rookie head coaches don’t tend to win very much with additional opportunities.
Obviously, not all of a team’s success or failures can be solely attributed to the head coach. When it comes to actively assessing why a team is struggling, the talent of the players matters, as well as the front office and, frankly, even a bit of luck in close games. But at the very least, we can conclude that when given more opportunities after a struggling season, there’s not much evidence to be actively hopeful about the coach taking a big step forward and being able to translate it into results.
Should The Patriots Fire Jerod Mayo?
First off, I want to say that not everything wrong with the Patriots is Mayo’s fault. The front office’s decision to run it back with several struggling players from 2023 was borderline baffling, as I covered several weeks ago. Mayo is not telling Rhaemondre Stevenson to fumble the ball before his runs. To a certain degree, the rest of the coaching staff has to be held accountable too. This includes DeMarcus Covington, New England’s newly hired defensive coordinator, and, to an extent, Alex Van Pelt, the offensive coordinator, who despite strong progress in developing aye has struggled from a lack of schematic creativity. In fact, it’s possible that much of the decision-making that I’ve attributed to Mayo may actually go to Van Pelt. At the same time though, Mayo frequently claims that he’s responsible for these choices.
However, I’m heavily skeptical that Mayo is worth giving another shot. While he seems liked among the players, I think his continued struggles as a game manager and lack of improvement – or, apparently, awareness of these issues – has made me believe that he is not the coach for the current moment. While the Patriots lack talent overall, there still remains too much at stake here for New England to ruin its budding franchise quarterback, as well as in its potentially huge off-season. Had Mayo simply struggled, it would have been one issue – but in addition to the team losing a lot, it has regressed in multiple key areas that Mayo was supposed to help out in.
It would take a tremendous performance from the Patriots these final two weeks – nothing short of dominant upsets over the Los Angeles Chargers and Buffalo Bills, as well as more aggressive play-calling – for me to believe that Mayo deserves another chance. The Patriots should move on.