Rebuilding a team is never easy, but this is no ordinary rebuild facing the New England Patriots – as once the most dominant dynasty the NFL has ever seen is now having to be reconstructed from the ground up.
Fans in New England were spoilt rotten with almost two decades of unbridled success during the Tom Brady and Bill Belichick era – the greatest quarterback and head coach combination the sport has ever witnessed.
They became the Manchester United of the NFL, but now face a similar problem as the Red Devils in trying to replicate their success while replacing club legend Sir Alex Ferguson.
After 11 years they are still seemingly no closer to finding their ideal replacement. The Patriots will hope to get back to the summit of their sport a lot quicker.
And the man following ‘the man’ – and playing the David Moyes role – is Jerod Mayo – at just 38 he’s the youngest head coach in the league in his first year in the top job, but has the responsibility of piecing the Patriots back together brick by brick.
The Brady & Belichick era – the hardest act to follow
To truly understand the size of the task in hand for such a young and inexperienced head coach as Mayo, it’s worth remembering some of the more incredible achievements of a side that became the team to beat every season for two decades.
In the 18 seasons Brady played the majority of games the Patriots reached the Super Bowl nine times, winning six, in what is just a phenomenal rate of success in a sport built for parity.
The pair had a 100% record in earning 18 winning seasons, won 17 AFC East titles and made 13 AFC Championship games – including a run of eight years in a row where they were playing for a place in the Super Bowl.
Throw in that incredible 16-0 perfect regular season, and almost every individual and head coach-quarterback record you can think of, and it’s the very essence of a dynasty.
Good luck following that!
A crumbling empire – how the Patriots hit rock bottom
Brady left for Tampa Bay and a seventh Super Bowl ring in 2020 and the Patriots have not been the same since, with just one winning season in four and a 29-38 record before Belichick left the team in January this year.
“Great things can’t last forever,” Scott Pioli, who was vice president of personnel at the Patriots from 2000-09 told BBC Sport. “What that organisation was able to do for so many years was unprecedented.”
It was a slow death for the Belichick era in Foxborough, potential Brady replacements would come and go – including a rare first-round pick of Mac Jones that never worked out.
And frustration grew on both sides as Belichick could neither reach the same coaching heights as before nor find the magic touch with player signings and, as the man pretty much in sole charge of both, the end was inevitable.
“Before Jerod Mayo took over as head coach, things weren’t trending in the right direction,” noted Pioli. “That’s why there was a change, and it’s a completely different culture.”
‘The Patriot Way’ – how do you build a dynasty?
Sharing general manager duties with Belichick for almost a decade, not many know more about the inner workings of the Patriots at that time than Pioli, so he knows more than most how to build a dynasty in the NFL.
And following such giants of the game will be tough as “there’s an expectation, and it’s possibly an unrealistic expectation for Jerod and Eliot Wolf, the new general manager”.
“They need time to implement their programme, get their players in,” said Pioli. “Just because there’s players there who played for Bill, it doesn’t mean they’re the right players for Jerod. They’re starting from ground zero and it’s a complete rebuild.”
The ‘Patriot Way’ was built around Belichick’s no-nonsense approach of just “do your job” and not worry about anything else.
No egos were allowed, not even Brady, as despite being the shining light of the league he regularly restructured his contract and took less than he could have earned elsewhere in order to build a championship-winning side under salary cap constraints.
A dynasty is built on much more than a star coach and quarterback though: “It was never just Bill, it was never just Tom, it was never just the two of them,” insisted Pioli. “We built this thing and it was a mass of people.”
Can Mayo and Maye be the men for the future?
Owner Robert Kraft hand-picked Mayo as the team’s new head coach as he wanted a change in culture, with a younger man at the helm more in tune with how to develop modern-day players.
There’s not much expectation for this year, which Kraft says will “be great growth and lay the foundation for the future” as Mayo and a new coaching staff find their feet.
A first-round pick in 2008 by Belichick, former linebacker Mayo spent seven years playing for the team, so has the ‘Patriot Way’ entrenched in his DNA, but with a modern upgrade.
They arrive in London 1-5 but with some first signs of hope that rookie QB Drake Maye could be the answer after a promising first start in Sunday’s defeat by the Houston Texans.
The third pick of this year’s draft threw three touchdown passes on his NFL debut, that’s three more than top two picks Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels managed in their first games.
The 22-year-old showcased a big arm and some nifty footwork that has some beleaguered Patriots fans now heading to Wembley on Sunday with renewed hope that light could be at the end of the tunnel.
“You have to have an idea, a plan, and a process,” said Pioli on how to rebuild a team.
Eleven years on from Sir Alex, Manchester United are still searching for theirs – but in Mayo and Maye the Pats hope they may have found the cornerstones of the biggest renovation project in the NFL.
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