Image courtesy of Matt Slocum/Associated Press

That didn’t take long. What, like, two months?

Matt Slater is still a football guy at heart and a lifetime Patriot. So, it’s only fitting that the guy who was instrumental in maintaining culture in Foxborough for years is going to have the chance to help implement a fresher one in the Jerod Mayo era.

ESPN’s Mike Weiss reported over the weekend that Slater will be serving as a ‘right hand man’ of sorts to Mayo.

“Slater had other opportunities he could have pursued but elected to stay with the franchise he played for from 2008 to 2023. One source described his role as a “right-hand man” to first-year head coach Mayo, providing Mayo a sounding board on football and team building, as well as assistance in “people development,” Reiss wrote.

Slater had announced his retirement on February 20th, but his teammates won’t have to miss him one moment longer, with Reiss reporting that it’s a full-time role with the team.

This is obviously a no-risk, high-reward decision by Mayo. Either Slater realizes that coaching life isn’t for him (I highly doubt that happens) or that togetherness that Slater helped bring to the locker room for so many years – even at 4-13 – is still around the building. It’ll also be nice to have one of the greatest special teamers of all time around during a time  in NFL history where the kickoff is drastically changing. Who knows what his mind could come up with creatively or how much he could help guys as everyone sort of figures this out on the fly.

Free agent signings have clearly been centered around ‘culture’ throughout free agency and there’s no one better than Matthews Slater to help spread the positivity around at 1 Patriot Place, especially if life is rough again with an aging Jacoby Brissett and/or a rookie QB taking his lumps.