At the start of the offseason 11 months ago, New England assistant coach Jerod Mayo turned down head-coaching interviews, and the Patriots announced that it was working on a new contract that would “keep him with the team long-term.” That led to immediate speculation that Mayo was Bill Belichick’s heir apparent.
Now, with talk that Belichick is done after this season, Mayo was asked if he is the Patriots’ next head coach. Unsurprisingly, he wouldn’t answer directly.
“You’ve been here long enough,” Mayo said to the reporter, via WBZ. “You already -- I bet you can say the answer that I’m about to give you. We’re 100 percent focused on the Chiefs. And you know, I only try to control the controllables and that’s out of my control. Hopefully as you guys all know, one day I want to be a head coach. Where that is, I don’t know. But at the same time, I would say I have a lot of love for New England. I have a lot of love for the fans, the people around the building. And you know, my family, they love it here as well. So that would be great if I could stay here and continue to progress throughout my career, but we’ll see.”
Whenever Belichick leaves New England, Robert Kraft will have a major decision to make about who should succeed him. Mayo would be a logical choice, even if he’s not going to lobby for the job publicly.