FOXBOROUGH — If you came to the Jerod Mayo introductory press conference on Wednesday to get a clue about the Patriots' vision for this team after 24 years of Bill Belichick's reign, you came away disappointed.
While there was a promise that the big questions — coordinators, offensive scheme, final say on football decisions — would be answered at some point, today was not that day.
For those keeping score, there are 54 days until the legal tampering period for free agency begins.
It's somewhat curious since Robert Kraft has known for years (at least the last year, contractually) that Mayo would be Belichick's successor. You would expect there to be a communicated vision along the way that the Krafts bought into. And if the final decision was made during the 4-13 season, Mayo had to be thinking about exactly what he would change, how the personnel department would go and what he wanted to do scheme-wise.
Evidently that has not happened. Because we got answers on none of them.
We couldn't even get a straight answer on where team president Jonathan Kraft was. He was announced as being involved in the press conference earlier in the week, but he was not present on Wednesday. Perhaps that was in response to reporting, from myself and Seth Wickersham, that many around the team think he will be involved in football operations.
Robert Kraft said there was an innocent explanation.
"Well, I know Jonathan had planned to be here today. He really is running all of the Kraft Group companies, and something has come up today that was really important," Kraft said. "But he really serves as -- he's like an equal partner to me in the running of the operations strategically. He's not involved in the day-to-day operations. He's helping me on an overall basis in the ownership position and would have been here, but one of the other companies had an issue that was critical, and he's dealing with that."
Not sure what could have been more important than introducing the first new head of football operations in 25 years for massive piece of their business, but...
Who will have final say on the important decisions that need to be made?
To be announced, basically ... maybe. Could very well be the status quo.
"In the short-term, we're looking for collaboration," Kraft said. "Our team has a tremendous opportunity to position itself right, given our salary cap space, and we've never drafted -- in my 30 years of ownership, we've never been drafting as low as we're drafting. We're counting on our internal people whom we're still learning and evaluating. So, we're going to let that evolve and develop, and before the key decisions have to be made, we will appoint someone. At the same time, we'll probably start doing interviews and looking at people from the outside.
"But my bias has always been, in all our family companies, to try to develop a culture from within where we understand one another. ... We like to get continuity in our company, get the most competent people, and then try to build stability, and so before we just rush and hire people, we want to understand what we have internally. It's a long answer, but an important question."
What about hiring a general manager for the first time?
"We want to see what we have in-house, look what's out there in the marketplace, and then do what we think is right," Kraft said. "I know people have ideas, but I can just assure you, any decision we make at this time will be to try to give the support to Jerod and put the organization in the best position it can to win games.
"We don't have a fixed formula. We're going to do -- we know what's worked for us in the past, and that's what we're going to do here in the future."
What about coordinators, will there be offensive, defensive and special teams coordinators?
"Everything is still under consideration," Mayo said. "Obviously, the staff that I've been working with isn't the staff that I have chosen, but everything is under evaluation.
"I think it's important. I think titles are important, and I know -- no knock to Coach Belichick who has been a huge mentor to me over the years as a player and as a colleague, what I would say is I believe titles are important outward-looking, but as far as in the building, I don't care what your title is. It's what's your job, what value do you bring to the organization. I think that's the most important thing."
What is Mayo's vision for the offense?
He didn't really have a good answer, but it sounded like he wasn't a fan of Mac Jones, who was in attendance.
"First of all, I would say just the energy, the passion, the leaders on the offensive side of the ball. I think you have to get that stuff in place," Mayo said. "...One thing we don't want to do is have people who are complainers or finger-pointing or things like that. ... You want your players to, when they walk out the door, you're not worried about the decisions that they're going to make outside of this building. Once again, I think we have a good foundation. We have a good foundation, and my thing here over the next few weeks is to rebuild some relationships, knock down silos, and collaborate. That's what I'm focused on."
How far away is this team?
"I think it's too early to tell," Mayo said. "We're still in the evaluation process. So we'll see."
Finally, I asked Kraft why he didn't interview anyone else for the job given a chance to revamp everything?
Kraft is going with his gut instinct, which he didn't do in 1996 with Pete Carroll over Belichick.
"We're willing to do things that are unorthodox," Kraft said. "It's worked out pretty well for us over the last 50 years. So here I've learned when I went with my instincts the two women in my life that I lucked out, one-day connection, and I just went with my instinct, and the only time I didn't was Bill Belichick in '96 after I saw what went on, I didn't hire him. I made another hire. I didn't hire him. My instinct was to do it, but because of his loyalty to a man we had such difficulty with who did a great job, but he took another job when we were going to the Super Bowl, and I just couldn't bring someone in -- because trust is so important. But as I watched what happened when he was with his next team, I realized I made a mistake. I should have gone with my instincts in '96, and I hired Bill. That worked out pretty well.
"Well, I have the same feeling now having watched Jerod for 16 years in a lot of different situations. I think sometimes we think a little differently than other competitors, and we try to do what's right for our system. I think we've got someone very special who understands how to manage young people today. The world is different than 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. In all our businesses, we try to create a culture that people want to stay with and be there long-term, and I think that Jerod has the makeup and chemistry, and it's genuine. What he has is genuine. Just think about how he got elected captain in his second year with us when we had tremendous veterans. I think it went for seven years you were a captain? He was captain in a tremendous period. Then he went out on his own in business to get a change.
"I think we're ready to kick butt."
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How the Patriots are going to go from 4-13 to kicking butt?
No one has any idea ... yet.
There was no mention of hires on staff. No mention of Bill O'Brien, who remains under contract for two more years. No mention of Eliot Wolf or Matt Groh, who are reportedly in charge of personnel for now.
The press conference was heavy on how Mayo views leadership and connecting with young players, and his differences with Belichick. Also heavy on Kraft's business history and lessons learned via his instincts.
But there were scant details on how this football program is going to move forward.
Hopefully Mayo has a better vision than the one they declined to communicate.
Obviously, there's a lot on the line.