Last week, Bill Belichick, the arguably best football head coach of all time, stepped down as the new england patriots’ head coach. (as a lifelong los angeles (and st. louis) rams fan, i’m still skeptical about the conclusions of “spygate,” which was alleged to have impacted super bowl 36, Belichick and tom brady’s first of many championships in the 2000s and 2010.)
One could argue that belichick or brady played a bigger part in new england’s success during that period, but the results show that the former is a superpower in the coaching arena.
On wednesday, new england revealed jerod mayo as belichick’s replacement. Mayo’s career was chronicled on x, with the patriots posting a snapshot of him as a player: he was a first-round pick, a one-time all-pro, and made the pro bowl a few times. What about his coaching career? After all, he’s filling up a ton of voids. Let’s look at it for a moment: for a few years, he was the pats’ “inside linebackers” coach.
There is no such thing as a head coach… or even a coordinator (offensive or defensive) experience.i’ll be the first to argue that good coaching, especially in this era of overpaid athletes, requires a lot of unique “intangibles,” most notably the ability to relate and motivate. Maybe mayo has that. It’s a bit difficult to believe pats owner robert kraft and Belichick (who reportedly recommended mayo as his replacement) would choose someone who they felt did not have this gift. We’ll see.
Mayo says in his introductory press conference that he is a man who “sees color.” what many social media clips don’t reveal about the press conference is that mayo’s remarks contradict owner kraft’s assertion that he is a believer in “colorblindness” a minute or two before. Mayo’s point of view isn’t unique, especially today.
Mayo’s argument that color “doesn’t really matter… but it does matter” is similar to oregon state university’s josé-antonio orosco’s argument that “ignoring race is in fact ignore racism,” and a former delaware teacher of the year said that “race is not only a biological phenomenon, but that, of course, it is real.” but, as david marcus of the weekly standard said a few years ago, colorblindness “d It means that you do not make rational decisions based on skin color, and, much to the dismay of progressives, many black people do the same thing (the former being tampa bay buccaneers coach todd bowls, who is playing in the nfl divisional round on sunday).
