Buckley: Jerod Mayo whistles while he works, says it's real now as Patriots begin camp (2024)

FOXBORO, Mass. — Jerod Mayo was named the 15th head coach of the New England Patriots on Jan. 12. For most of us, that’s enough time to have settled into the job, to have sailed past the dreaded six-month performance review, to have racked up enough PTO to take the family on a little trip somewhere.

But we all know there’s absolutely nothing “normal” about being a head coach in the NFL. In terms of the stakes, the expectations, the understanding that some rabid fan named, oh, Tony from Quincy, is on the radio this very moment complaining about something you said or did, or didn’t say or do, the job can be an express train to Crazytown.

Only now, though, does the real work actually begin for Mayo. Before Tuesday morning, everything was a mixture of light lifting (photo ops, TV appearances, moving into the new digs) and organizational heavy lifting (assembling a staff, hunkering down with vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf and the rest of the football ops crowd for the NFL Draft), but now comes a form of heavy lifting that’s on a par with moving mountains.

We’re talking about actual coaching. Training camp for the 2024 season is now officially underway at Gillette Stadium, and Mayo, apparently very eager to get going, kicked off a scheduled 10 a.m. news conference at exactly 9:57.

But he’s so much more than the new coach. Mayo is stepping in for Hall of Fame lock Bill Belichick, now a burgeoning TV star but best known as the man who coached the Patriots to six Super Bowl championships during his 24 seasons as New England’s sideline boss. As if that’s not enough heat for Mayo, this is also the former Patriots linebacker’s first head coaching gig. Put still another way, Belichick has a 333-0 lead over Mayo in NFL coaching victories, playoffs included.

It was with all that in mind that I asked to spend some time with Mayo after Tuesday morning’s news conference.

We talked about what’s going on inside this man’s head now as opposed to six months ago.

“I just kind of dove in,” Mayo said. “There are a lot of things that happen on the back end that don’t happen on the field.”

And now?

“It is different,” he said. “It’s different when they put the pads on. Remember, I was out there with the whistle in the spring, those guys were out there practicing. But it’s going to be different when they put the pads on in training camp, because I’ll have to tame my excitement because I want to put the pads on still.

“Being out there for training camp is when it will really hit me.”

Now, about that whistle he was mentioning: Did his family gift him some kind of silver-plated whistle from Tiffany? Did Mayo go online and order up a couple from Amazon.com? (I found one for $3.99 from Bsofing, “made of high-quality steel” that “won’t easily rust or corrode.” Lanyard included!)

Tuns out Mayo didn’t get an expensive whistle and he didn’t go cheap.

“Oftentimes, I forget my whistle,” he said. “I just yell to the equipment manager that I need a whistle. It comes right out of the pack. I don’t have a gold Deion Sanders whistle. Didn’t happen. I have a normal whistle. I’m a normal guy.”

Tuesday morning was a mad dash for the new coach of the Patriots.

“I didn’t look in the mirror this morning,” he said. “I didn’t have breakfast. I did have a staff meeting. It was good.”

And then, at 9:57, three minutes early, because there is football to be coached out there on the practice fields behind Gillette Stadium, he walked into the media room.

Mayo answered the usual questions about the usual topics, including a question that in one form or another will be posed every day from now until … well, now until Mayo makes a quarterback change. As of Tuesday morning beginning at 9:57, though, and you’ve already heard this a hundred times, “Jacoby (Brissett) is the starting quarterback at this point in time. We can look at these other quarterbacks on the roster. At the same time, it’s about competition. So when we get out on the field this summer with the pads on, we’ll see how it all plays out. But coming out of the spring, I think it’s clear that Jacoby is the most pro-ready guy we have.”

"It could absolutely happen."

Despite Jacoby Brissett being the current starter, Jerod Mayo isn't counting Drake Maye out to start opening day 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/os8bm6A8LJ

— NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) July 23, 2024

There was a wee bit of Belichick in that response. Belichick was never one to ladle out praise to rookies who’ve never done anything at the NFL level, and the other back-in-the-day Bill, as in Parcells, conducted his affairs in the same manner. So when Mayo initially lumped first-round draft pick Drake Maye in there with “these other quarterbacks,” that was some old-timey coachspeak going on.

If you’re keeping score at home, the first mention of Bill Belichick took place about 3 1/2 minutes into the news conference.

“The overarching message is about competition, and it’s also about building camaraderie and knowing what to do,” Mayo said. “I’ve learned a lot of principles here, obviously from Bill, and being tough, smart and dependable is something that makes a good team. That’s still part of my message to the guys. But in the end, it’s about competition and going out and beating the man across from you.”

And that was that. The coaching, the real coaching, now begins. Somebody give this man a whistle.

(Photo: Steven Senne / Associated Press)

Steve Buckley is a columnist for The Athletic. He was previously a sports columnist for the Boston Herald and The National Sports Daily. Earlier stops include covering baseball for the Hartford Courant, Tacoma News Tribune and Portland (Maine) Press Herald. Follow Steve on Twitter @BuckinBoston