Image courtesy of Nick Cammett/Diamond Images

This very well could be the final week of the Bill Belichick era in New England.

As rumors continue to swirl about the future of the organization, one guy at the center of much of the discussion is Jerod Mayo.

Mayo is finishing up his fifth year as an assistant under Belichick and at some point, he’s going to be a head coach in the NFL. The question now is whether or not it’ll be here or somewhere else. Before that can happen though, Mayo needed to address some recent reports that he’s ‘rubbed people the wrong way,’ in the building at 1 Patriot Place.

Mayo was asked directly about it during Zoom availability on Tuesday morning.

“Honestly, I try to stay out of reading a lot of the articles and things during the year,” he said. “Obviously, there are ups and downs that play a part in life and also in football. Honestly, when that report came out – my brother sent it to me – it was more hurtful than anything. I found it to be…the timing was a little bit weird in my opinion. If that was the case, I feel like this would have been ‘leaked’ sometime earlier. At the same time, I try to treat everyone the same way and I will say this…I thought about it for a while…when people talk about ‘rubbing people the wrong way,’ obviously, sometimes that’s part of the job of being a leader is to rub people the wrong way. I always try to be constructive and respectful in my feedback and some people appreciate that transparency and some don’t.

“At the end of the day, if you can’t rub people the wrong way, how do you expect to be the best leader you can be? I would say any time there’s change or anything like that, it’s going to be painful. It’s going to rub you the wrong way. At the end of the day, you have to look through all the words and really get to the substance and get to the meat and potatoes of what that person’s trying to say. It actually helped me. It kind of triggered a period of self reflection. I know it’s recent and I know it’s like a week old at this point, but it triggered an opportunity for self reflection.

“We all have blind spots and maybe that’s one of my blind spots, but at the end of the day, hopefully whoever put that story out is man or woman enough to bring it to my attention to have a conversation.”

Whether it was a player or another coach that may (or may not) have said this, Mayo certainly deserves to know who it was, especially if it’s another coach who may have been trying to stop him from being Belichick’s successor.

If Mayo is going to have the respect of the locker room – which there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t given his playing career and business-like approach – there can’t be a cloud hanging over him or people trying to sabotage his first head coaching opportunity. If this franchise is going to turn things around quickly but keep the next hire in house, then all family business needs to be cleared up after the final whistle this Sunday.

“I went through the whole emotional cycle. First of all, being angry. Being angry at the point where I always feel like I treat people the same and really haven’t changed in regards to that,” Mayo acknowledged. “I have evolved as a coach and I have evolved as a man in my mid-30’s, but at the same time I would just hope that going forward those people give me a chance to explain myself and also give me an opportunity to try to get on the same track. At the end of the day though, some people are going to like you and some people aren’t. I’m okay with that. Some reporters are going to like you and some aren’t. Some players are going to like you and some aren’t, but I hope there would be a mutual level of respect. Level of respect with the media, level of respect with the coaches and also the players.

“When it’s all said and done, I think the players understand that we as a coaching staff are trying to put them in the best possible position to execute. From a coaching perspective, I only want people around me that are going to tell me the truth. I don’t want to be trapped in an echo chamber and things like that because we all have blind spots…you would hope that through building relationships that people were very open about having those one-on-one conversations. Honestly. when those sources come out, you look around and it’s like, ‘who would say something like that?’

“But, at the end of the day, it is what it is and I’ve taken that in and tried to absorb it. Went through the whole emotional roller coaster and trying to push forward.”

Mayo was also asked about the idea of him being a head coach at some point, whether it’s in Foxborough or elsewhere. Having been a player and a guy that also immersed himself in the business world for a while after he was done playing, Mayo has unique perspective on what it’ll take to be a head coach in the NFL.

It’s been a topic of discussion for a couple years now, but never with Belichick’s future in such doubt.

“One thing I learned at Optum under Larry Renfroe and my manager Mike Mateo was just being able to talk to different people,” he said. “I think I’ve talked about this before, as far as diversity is concerned, most people just think of diversity as black and white. There’s generational diversity, there’s diversity of thought and all those are welcomed, at least to me. I want to build an environment where there is a sense of physcolognical safety, where people don’t feel handcuffed to give their opinion. At the end of the day, you think about just a great culture…and I would say that’s a longer conversation as far as what culture actually is, because culture could be a retrospective way of really validating or invalidating success.

“This team won a bunch of games, so the culture must be great. Or, this team lost a bunch of games, so the culture must be bad. That’s not necessarily true. When I think about when I do get my opportunity – and I don’t know when that’s going to be, honestly I’m kind of like a dry leaf blowing in the wind where God takes me – but at the same time, I feel like I’m prepared. I feel like I’m ready. I feel like I can talk to men, women, old, young, white, black, it doesn’t matter and hopefully develop those people into upstanding citizens and help them evolve.

“That’s kind of how I think about it. I feel like my calling is to develop and I would also say the role of a head coach is also way different than the role of a coordinator, way different than the role of a position coach. So, I look forward to the opportunity wherever that may be.”

If it’s here, Mayo needs to know he can trust that everyone is pulling in the same direction, otherwise he deserves a better, less dysfunctional opportunity somewhere else.