football – BOB SOCCI

From afar, an up-close look at how America’s Game has gone global

I’ve been awed by tens of thousands at NFL games in Mexico and Europe, but learning about some of the faces in those crowds moved me in a very personal way.

Prior to the New England Patriots vs. Jacksonville Jaguars at London’s Wembley Stadium in 2024.

More than 3,000 miles and an ocean away from Foxborough, on a North Atlantic island a wee west of Scotland’s mainland, one doesn’t expect to find much interest in the NFL draft outside of a chance encounter with a fellow American tourist.

But here on Islay, the 240-square-mile isle of roughly 3,000 year-round residents famous for its peated whiskeys, Caroline Ogden’s eyes light up from behind the cafe counter at the Laphroaig distillery, where she manages the visitor center.

“The draft begins tonight!” she excitedly says to me on this Thursday afternoon.

Caroline is all Scot, all smiles and all-in for Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals. Her husband, however, roots for a different team and, right now, she wishes he were here to meet this New Englander and perhaps talk about who that team, the Patriots, might choose with this evening’s fourth overall pick.

It’s the second time in as many days of a trip split between a London family vacation, a Scottish celebration of a good friend’s milestone and middle-of-the-night draft-watching that I’ve forged a transatlantic relationship over America’s Game. The first involved a father and his teenage son who live a few hours by ferry and car east of Islay, in a small town this side of Glasgow.

Craig Flynn started Mini Tours Scotland in 2004, operating out of his home in Greenock and crisscrossing the United Kingdom and Ireland, cracking jokes and creating an appreciation of the local history and culture for his clients to take back home. In recent years, he’s also made time for personal travel, taking his boy Gregor to places as far away as New York and as near as not-so-far-away London.

“You might not believe why we go to London,” Craig said to me as I listened from the other front seat, the one on the left, as he drove us out of Edinburgh the day before. “We go there to see American football.”

In fact, Craig told me, unknowing of what I do or where I do it for a living, they were there last October to watch Gregor’s favorite team compete against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium.

“That one started well,” I laughed, thinking back to the Patriots’ short-lived 10–0 lead in an eventual 32–16 loss, “before it took a wrong turn.”

Thankfully, Craig made all the right turns — odd as they were for me, from the left lane — and for the next few hours riding across Edinburgh’s cobblestones toward Argyll and Bute’s country roads, away from one castle en route to another, our conversation veered between Scottish, English and Gaelic history and American football.

From the passenger’s seat, the one on the left, while driving toward Loch Restil in Scotland.

Gregor, his dad was proud to say, played two kinds of football, neither being the one preferred by most kids in the U.K. The young lad quarterbacks the Scottish national flag football team and is a tight end and QB for the East Kilbride Tigers in tackle football.

Over lunch along our way, Craig shared some photos from Wembley, by then well aware that I was there too. Seated in an end zone section, Gregor stood out in a nautical blue jersey, the Flying Elvis on his sleeves and №10 on his front and back. It had been a Mac Jones replica shirt, until a strip of tape and magic marker turned it into a Drake Maye model.

This wasn’t a kid, I thought to myself, who learned the sport by watching NFL Europe’s Scottish Claymores. Their last game was in 2004, well before he was born. Nor, based on the positions he plays and his souvenir jersey of choice, was he drawn to the game in hopes of being another in the NFL’s line of Scottish kickers and punters, the next Graham Gano or Jamie Gillen.

I’ve seen broad examples of the payoff from the NFL’s 21st Century investment in international markets while calling Patriots games in Mexico City, Frankfurt and London. And I’ve heard them in the chants of “Bra-dy! Bra-dy!” at Estadio Azteca and cheers for Sebastian Vollmer at Deutsche Bank Park.

But here in Scotland, learning about a face in those crowds helped to put a face on a reminder that the appeal of the Patriots and the sport they play reaches well beyond the Maine and Cape Cod coastlines. Sometimes in deep, personal ways.

No, the Pats will never even remotely approach the level of interest Scots have in Rangers F.C., Celtic F.C. or, in another sport, their national rugby squad. Still, to quote Will Campbell, the player they chose with the aforementioned fourth pick of the draft, their “logo speaks for itself.” And, as I’ve recently heard, in more than one accent or dialect.

Same for the NFL shield. Once a sport that we Americans mostly owned to ourselves, it is increasingly a global game.

During his Super Bowl week press conference in February commissioner Roger Goodell kept alive the notion that a franchise could someday be located in an international market, adding that it wouldn’t surprise him if a Super Bowl were to follow.

Annually, new sites are being added to the league’s regular season world tour. São Paulo last year. Dublin and Madrid this year. Melbourne next year. Paris, perhaps, the year after next.

And new global markets are continually being assigned to individual teams. In March, the league granted marketing rights to four teams for Greece and the United Arab Emirates.

Within the last decade in Scotland, the 67,000-seat rugby stadium at Murrayfield in Edinburgh and 52,000-seat Hampden Park in Glasgow were considered possible sites to host NFL games. But such talk has quieted in recent years as the league has expanded outside of the U.K. Nevertheless, a pair of Sots made history in the Highlands over the weekend.

On the third day of the draft, the 162nd choice overall, selected in the fifth round by the New York Jets, became the NFL’s first pick announced live from Scotland. Brothers and professional strongmen Luke and Tom Stoltman donned tartan kilts matching their green Jets jerseys and in their Highland lilt read the name of University of Miami linebacker Francisco Mauigoa, an American Samoan, while standing before Aldourie Castle at Loch Ness.

All to feed a monster whose appetite may never be satisfied. The league says there are tens of millions of NFL fans beyond our shores, and tens of millions more of potential converts who will buy its merch and pay for tickets if and when a game is held in or near their neck of the woods.

Just like the Ogdens and Flynns in a land marked by silver birch and Scottish pines.

Sunday morning I received a text from Craig, who was off on another father-and-son football journey. This was a relatively short one to Inverness for an Under-19 matchup of East Kilbride and the Highland Wildcats.

Craig included another photo. In this one, Gregor is wearing his own jersey. He’s in the Pirates’ red and black, standing in the grass, his helmet in hands and teammates in the background, and could pass for any of a million other kids his age across this country on any autumn weekend.

The picture came with an update. Gregor, Craig wrote, replaced the injured starter at quarterback and led the Pirates to a 35–24 win.

I read it with a smile, before moving on to reports about the Patriots’ post-draft class of college free agents. One of whom is a defensive lineman from Virginia Tech.

His name is Wilfried Pene. His hometown is Tours, France.

This article was originally published to www.985thesportshub.com on May 1, 2025. I’ve called play-by-play for the Patriots Radio Network on 98.5 The Sport Hub since 2013. Please join me on Bluesky and Instagram.

A player’s retirement and broadcaster’s lament

THERE’S A LOT TO SAY ABOUT MATTHEW SLATER, AN ALL-TIME GREAT IN HIS FOOTBALL SPECIALTY, AND, FOR ME, ONE THING I WISH WENT UNSAID.

**Ten-time Pro Bowler Matthew Slater retired after 16 seasons with the New England Patriots.**

Open your mouth to a live microphone for three unscripted hours at a time, trying to instantly frame the unpredictable action of an NFL game unfolding before you, and there are bound to be a few words and phrases you’d like to have back at the end of the day.

Add up mostly Sundays and a few weeknights per year over 11 seasons and, at least for this New England Patriots announcer, lines you wish you could rewind and re-word are too numerous to rue.

Except for one, spoken on Sept. 29, 2019.

The Patriots were in Orchard Park, N.Y., leading Buffalo, 6–0, on a cloudy and cool afternoon, as the Bills set up to punt from their 33-yard line midway through the first quarter. Poised for an all-out rush, the Pats stacked 10 players in tight, including Matthew Slater tucked well inside of J.C. Jackson on the right edge.

Fourteen yards away, Buffalo’s Corey Bojorquez, who began his career in New England, caught a low snap inches below his knee caps. Righting himself, he took two steps and dropped the ball onto his left instep, just as Jackson instantaneously extended his arms.

There was a loud thud. The ball popped high in the air before plummeting to the Bills’ 11, on the field’s far side. It bounced straight up to Slater, who in a singular act plucked it, carried it across the goal line and held it in his outstretched right hand while dropping to his knees.

Given a clear view of Jackson, I saw the block correctly. But the score I botched. Seeing the “8” of Slater’s “18” as a zero, to my unending regret, I blurted out the name of №10, Josh Gordon.

The word bubble barely off my tongue, I realized it was Slater in the end zone; Gordon wasn’t even on the field. The error of my words hit me with the bluntness of Jackson’s block. Thud!

“Make it Matthew Slater,” I uttered a split second later, sinking where I stood in our booth. “Matthew Slater with the recovery and the score.”

Leaving out an exclamation mark, I barely punctuated the play with a period.

It was the first, and would turn out to be the only touchdown in the brilliant career of the Patriot I most respected then, as now. If ever there was someone whose milestone merited a clean call, it was Slater, whose suffix, to hear coaches and teammates sing his praises, might as well be: Great player. Better person.

The following day, I encountered him in the Patriots locker room, back home in Foxborough, Mass. I apologized for my gaffe, and was received with a smile. No need to feel bad, he assured, gently shaking his head.

Still, it bothers me now, as then. Maybe more, knowing there won’t be another opportunity to nail the call of a score by Slater. At age 38, after 16 seasons as a Patriot, including 13 as a captain and 10 as a Pro Bowler, and with his one career touchdown, Matthew retired.

Expectation became official

Following a lopsided 2021 Wild Card playoff loss at Buffalo, Slater joined veteran teammate Devin McCourty in opting to play one more year. At least. When another loss at Buffalo in the 2022 finale kept the Pats out of the postseason, even as McCourty stepped aside, Slater committed to one more year. Again. But as the 2023 season spiraled toward a disastrous four-win, 13-loss end, it was obvious there’d be no ‘one more year’ for the three-time Super Bowl champ.

One such sign was in November on the Pats’ trip to Frankfurt, Germany, where Matthew was joined by wife Shahrzad and their family. Sleep deprived on the morning of arrival thousands of miles from home, he was nonetheless in his element: a husband and father doting on four little kids over a hotel breakfast.

More signs appeared en route to January’s season-ender vs. the Jets. For days leading up to the game, Slater repeatedly obliged team and media requests, reflective and relaxed. A year removed from pushing away from a podium in Buffalo, teary eyed, emotional and uncertain of his future, he seemed at peace.

**Slater appears at his final post-game press conference on Jan. 7, 2024.**

On game day, teammates stepped into a Nor’easter for warmups wearing special sweatshirts in his honor. Navy blue, with red and white lettering, they read “The Patriot” across the front. “Captain,” they said, above an “18” on the back. And on the left shoulder, in perfect order: “SON, FATHER, HUSBAND, TEAMMATE,” along with a list of career achievements.

Shortly before kickoff, the Slaters reunited there on the field. Matthew embraced his parents, Jackie and Annie, and brother David. Shahrzad and the kids cheered him on in their own “18” jerseys.

We’d later learn from a team-produced video that word was getting around, even among New York players. Slater confirmed to Jets contemporaries Thomas Morstead, 37, in his 15th season, and Aaron Rodgers, 40, in his 19th: this was it.

Three hours later, the snowy, slushy end to Slater’s 239th game — 264th, if you count playoffs — was marked by mutual admiration. Helmet off, he lingered on the field, heading toward the Northeast opening of Gillette Stadium as remaining fans offered a collective salute.

Slater returned it by raising his right hand, just as he did years earlier in the Bills end zone. Only this time, his extended right thumb, index and pinky fingers formed an offering of his love in sign language.

In recent years, I’ve listened to a handful of special teams coordinators around the league pay tribute to Slater, having watched him mature from unsure rookie to master craftsman. Among them, Dave Fipp of the Detroit Lions, once penned his respect for Slater, writing a personal letter of congratulations the first time Matthew made the Pro Bowl.

No special teamer reached more, which may be why a another, John Bonamego, who coordinated kicking units for 19 NFL seasons, more recently called Slater “a first-ballot Hall of Famer.” Bonamego won’t get much of an argument from his peers. Nor from me.

A Patriots Hall of Fame blazer for Slater is all but guaranteed. A Pro Football Hall of Fame jacket like the one his dad Jackie got as a legendary offensive tackle, is hardly a given. But here’s hoping this year’s selection of returner Devin Hester gets Matthew one too. Because nobody covered returners as well, for as long as he did.

Not that a clothing item — in Foxborough red or Canton gold — makes the man who finds validation in faith, family, relationships to others (in and out of the game) and community service. Humility was “a core value of our home,” Slater told me last spring, stressing that Jackie and Annie also imbued in their sons the importance of blending a strong sense of self with keen self-awareness.

That balance helps explain the player Matthew became, as a post-high school athlete generally devoid of an offensive or defensive position. At UCLA and in the NFL, Slater was mostly rostered as a receiver. He concluded his career with one catch (for the Pats in 2011) and four carries (including two as a Bruin and netting five yards overall).

Adept at returning kickoffs in college, Slater struggled as a pro. Ask him about it, and in typical self-deprecating manner, he laughingly labels himself “a bust.”

Obviously, Slater found a way to hold his place, regardless of listed position. Drafted by Bill Belichick as a fifth-rounder in 2008, he was determined to “become the best (kick) coverage player that (he) could be.”

Belichick has called him the best ever, a special teams equal to Tom Brady on offense and Lawrence Taylor on defense.

Tireless and egoless

On the Wednesday after returning from Frankfurt, the Pats held a practice before dispersing for a bye weekend. And as the doors to the locker room closed on an ensuing media availability, one player remained: Slater.

Of course. Still in workout gear; headed to the weight room. Sixteen seasons in; no different than his younger self, who former special teams coach Scott O’Brien described as a guy who shows up everyday like he might get cut that day.

Football’s so-called Turk never ran down Slater. Tuesday the ‘gunner’ opponents couldn’t keep down despite double and often triple teams, did what few in his unforgiving game can: he stopped running on his terms.

“It is time,” he told us in a statement through the team, “for (his) relationship with the game to evolve.”

As a player, Slater was an exemplar: of his specialty, of leadership, of the Patriots’ culture when at their best. On and off the field. In the football facility and community.

Slater was also an eloquent voice: for teammates, for the team, for special teams and for others whose stories need to be told. However his relationship with the game evolves, one expects he’ll keep advocating for all of the above.

In turn, there’s so much to say about Slater. And for me, there will always be one thing I wish had gone unsaid.

This is an updated version of an article originally published at www.985thesportshub.com. Bob Socci has been the New England Patriots radio broadcaster since 2013.

A Super Sunday For an Off-Duty NFL Announcer

Five years AFTER calling my fourth Super Bowl, I wasn’t where I wanted to be on Sunday; but where I was supposed to be.

After calling the first Super Bowl overtime in 2017, I watched the second from home on Sunday.

Appetizers were disappearing fast, while the main course waited to be roasted and grilled. The house was filled by in-laws invited for our semi-regular Sunday dinner, which on this once-a-year occasion doubled as a Super Bowl viewing party.

It was after 6 o’clock, about a half-hour to kickoff, and where was I, the biggest football fan in the family? Not home; not yet. Twenty-five miles from chips and cheese board, and the pale ale I’d picked up solely for the game, I was in one of the last places I typically want to be: a crowded and noisy shopping mall, subjected to the aromatic alchemy of the nearby Food Court. And I was growing increasingly impatient, waiting for my 12-year old to reemerge from a high-voltage playground known as Level 99. “A first of its kind,” according to its website, Level 99 features “ over 50-real world physical and mental challenges and games, craft drinks and elevated dining.”

Hours earlier, I’d driven my daughter there from drama practice — she’s playing Amanda Thripp in her middle-school production of ‘Matilda’ — to a meetup with friends. Resistant to the allure of ‘craft drinks and elevated dining,’ I gave her some independence from Dad and became a mall walker.

Wandering in search of a Valentine’s gift for my wife, I went in and out of anchor department stores and weaved around kiosks, evading the many retail interceptors pitching makeup and moisturizers, fidget spinners and cell phone cases. Could there possibly be so many people for whom phones are fashion accessories?

Occasionally, I scrolled for news on mine, which is still protected by the same black case I bought with my device several years ago. Otherwise, I remained disconnected from the event most Americans were fixed on. Missing pregame programming wasn’t a bother; I’d missed it before.

The past four years, for instance, I chose, like this one, to bypass the hype with the same elusiveness I showed sellers of minerals from the Dead Sea. In prior years, I had no choice; I wasn’t watching because I was working — at the games. Nope, I didn’t catch any of NBC’s chatter before Super Bowl XLIX. Or FOX’s for LI, NBC’s ahead of LII or CBS’s in the hours preceding LIII. I had my own broadcast to call.

On those afternoons, outside of Phoenix and in Houston, Minneapolis and Atlanta, I was getting ready to go on the air of the New England Patriots radio network. It was my voice (and that of partner Scott Zolak) heard on Pats broadcasts when Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson, James White ended the first Super Bowl overtime by scoring the last six points of the largest comeback in the game’s history and Tom Brady took a knee on the final snap of New England’s sixth championship victory. And, yeh, we also called (less enthusiastically) the unanswered Hail Mary at the end of the highest-scoring Super Bowl, won by Philadelphia, 41–33.

The view from the Patriots radio booth before Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta.

Reality Check

When asked what it was like in those moments, my response is any of the following: Out of body. Surreal. Incredible. Unbelievable. And years later, while waiting to the whiff of fast foods, dings of arcade games and flashes of laser lights while two of my peers were saying hello to audiences in Kansas City and San Francisco? All of the above, and more. And how!

At that moment, I even wondered, as I sometimes do, ‘did they ever occur at all?’ To me, they can feel as ephemeral as they are eternal. They were real; and yes, they were spectacular. And I was lucky as hell to experience them.

Snapped back to the reality of the present, my waiting game had to end. Back home, chicken and steak tips had gone on the grill. Vegetables were in the oven. Checking the GPS on my phone, I confirmed it would be impossible to get back there in time for the opening kick. I needed to go in.

Inside was chaos arranged in a maze of rooms and activities. I didn’t see my daughter at first. Nor her friends. Again the craft drinks on tap behind a long bar beckoned. Again I resisted. I stepped out, thinking I might have missed her. I texted, without reply. I went back in, without a sighting. I left again. This time, I called. Again without reply. I returned inside. And there she was.

We have to go, I said. I have to get my phone, she told me, leading me to a small storage locker. It didn’t open. Not on the first try. Nor the second. We found an employee to assist. He quizzed her on the contents, and turned his key. Just as she said, a $10 bill and phone, in its yellow case, rested inside.

With my car parked close to the exit, we hurried to leave. I backed out of my space and, of course, started the wrong way inside the garage. Turning around, I got us out, with a good 25–30 minutes still ahead of us. I turned on the radio. Former Super Bowl most valuable player Kurt Warner was interviewing the quarterbacks.

Wired from the blast she had with her friends, my daughter plugged in her playlist. The soundtrack of “Hamilton” blared, and she happily sang along. Just as she did the previous night, during a similar drive home in darkness from a dance showcase, where she performed beautifully.

As game time approached, I convinced her to get an update from Las Vegas, site of LVIII. Post Malone was singing “America The Beautiful.” Put your right hand on your heart, she told me. I couldn’t, shifting lanes approaching the highway exit on our right. Two hands on the wheel, I told her, even as Reba McIntyre sang the national anthem.

A few minutes, a few S-curves and a left turn later, we pulled into our driveaway and hustled to the front door. I couldn’t wait to eat. San Fran was driving promisingly in the opening series. The grill, my wife informed me, wasn’t going so well. Not hot enough. Its flames, but, thankfully, not my patient relatives, were doing a slow burn. I poured a beer, just as Christian McCaffrey fumbled the ball to KC, and went out to the patio to assess the situation.

One out of three burners was cooking. Great batting average. Not good enough to feed the hungry guests, or hosts. We called an audible, opting for a run inside. Thankfully, we fared better than the 49ers on their first drive. The food turned out great.

Real and Forever

Typically, I’m not one to enjoy viewing parties. I prefer watching sporting events I’m most interested in with little background noise and activity, which you might find strange, considering that during most games I care about, I’m talking over the sounds of 60,000 plus.

On Super Bowl Sunday, I watched the first half, as little cousins shrieked and laughed over announcers Jim Nantz and Tony Romo and our dog determinedly pushed past me to reach my overly generous, food-sharing father-in-law. Eventually, I pulled him back and the house emptied of visitors.

Around the time Usher took the halftime stage, our viewing party was down to my son and I. It ended, as you know, watching Patrick Mahomes roll right and toss the title-clinching touchdown pass to Mecole Hardman.

Like the Patriots I described more recently than it sometimes seems, the Chiefs were overtime winners and champions for a third time in five seasons. But unlike those Pats’ wins, there was no celebration to attend; only bedtime after I finished cleaning up.

Not the ending to Super Bowl Sunday anyone associated with an NFL team hopes to live. But when your biggest gripe on the biggest game day of the year is going to the mall or grilling on a stove top instead of a Weber, you’re living well. Especially when you can watch your daughter dance and hear her sing, and talk about the game with your son sitting next to you. Those moments are real; and they’re forever.

Originally published at www.bobsocci.com. Bob has been the New England Patriots radio broadcaster since 2013. He also writes for Boston’s 98.5 The Sports Hub.

Mayo, a leader of men in his own way

The following first appeared on 985thesportshub.com on Friday, Jan. 12, after former Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo was hired as the team’s new head coach.

***Author (left) with Jerod Mayo (center) and Scott Zolak at a pre-Super Bowl LIII rally at Gillette Stadium on Jan. 27, 2019. (Photo by David Silverman)***

The first time I met Jerod Mayo, he poked fun at my stentorian cadence behind a microphone in the middle of a high school field. True, before Hardy on 98.5, I was mimicked by Jerod, from Hampton Roads.

We were in Newtown, Conn. for a day-long event centered around a youth football clinic conducted by Patriots players and assistant coaches in the spring of 2013. As emcee, it was my first ‘official’ role as the team’s newly-hired broadcaster.

Drills concluded, and I introduced Mayo for a few words to the kids and their families seated all around us. Naturally, as always with him, a captain since his second season, he connected with the crowd. First, though, he hit yours truly with a playful jab, making note (and light) of my ‘announcer’s voice.’ Naturally, as always with Mayo, he did it smiling in a way that let me know: he was just busting my chops to break the ice.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to lend my voice to enough of his games. A torn pectoral muscle in the season’s sixth week – overshadowed by Tom Brady to Kenbrell Thompkins to beat the Saints – robbed Mayo of most of 2013. Further injury robbed him of most of the next year, too.

Rather than “wallow in (his) pain,” as Mayo told Gautam Mukunda on the NASDAQ World Reimagined podcast in March 2021 (the listen is well worth your time), he worked to help the team win. Mayo dived into film study with Steve Belichick, then a coaching assistant, and involved himself on the sidelines during games. Long a ‘coach on the field’ as an inside linebacker making defensive calls, he was a de facto ‘player-coach’ for an eventual Super Bowl champ.

We would later learn, watching the collaboration of Mayo and the young Belichick running the Pats defense in recent years, that they became very close in Jerod’s final ‘playing’ days; just as one can learn by listening to him chat with Mukunda, or by reading or watching features like TheAthletic.com or Patriots.com profiles from last year, that he simultaneously formed relationships to help him excel outside football.

A younger Mayo – he’s still very young, at 37 – probed owner Robert Kraft for insights into the business world. He sipped wine and listened intently in intellectual circles and sought mentorships that prepared him for success as an angel investor and an executive rising to vice president of business development for Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Care.

Mayo also made time for television, shining in spots alongside Tom E. Curran, Phil Perry and the rest of the NBC Sports Boston crew. He easily could sit on a network set, like Tedy Bruschi or one of the McCourtys. Instead, he reclaimed a seat in the film room, becoming a coach.

No sooner than Mayo’s return to One Patriot Place, he was seen as a future head coach, here and elsewhere, as evidenced by future interview opportunities. Even before last spring’s unique statement of ownership’s intentions to work out a deal to employ him long term, it was hard to envision the Krafts watching Mayo walk out the door to take over someone else’s team.

On Thursday, Robert Kraft reminded us of something Jonathan Kraft has spoken about publicly in the past: how a relationship was formed with Bill Belichick in part over a mutual understanding of economics, the salary cap, value over cost, etcetera. They connected on a level transcending the game on the field.

If you listen to Mayo and Mukunda; or hear him in the dot-com feature describe the formative influences of his mother and grandfather; or consider the intellectual and analytical thirst for information required to succeed in funding private startups; it’s easy to understand how Mayo and the Krafts would connect on a higher plane than a grid of Xs and Os.

Then, take into account his leadership skills demonstrated as a rookie in a linebackers room populated by Bruschi and Junior Seau and Mike Vrabel. Mayo was the kid they dispatched to knock on Bill Belichick’s door to pitch their case for an occasional day off from padded practice.

“If the worst thing someone can do to you is say, ‘no,’” Mayo’s mother, Denise, told her son, “go for it.”

Most — maybe two-thirds — of the time Belichick gave him a hard ‘no.’ But when the reply was ‘yes,’ Mayo was celebrated among his mates. A year later, they voted him captain.

“The guys knew I cared about them more than I cared about myself,” he said to Mukunda of his youthful willingness to knock on that door, to go for it.

Sixteen-years later, the same feeling is consistent among the players Mayo’s coached. Mark Daniels of Masslive.com is one of many reporters who’ve written their testimonials in recent days.

No doubt, concerns, questions, criticism, all come with this hire. Not unlike the one Robert Kraft made in January of 2000.

After all, Mayo’s never been a ‘coordinator,’ let alone a head coach. Absolutely, Vrabel is available, and we know all too well how good he is from the games he’s coached against the Patriots (see 2018, at Nashville, or, worse, January of 2020, in Foxborough).

You’re right, Jerod’s a defensive coach, hired as the organization closes in on a crossroads draft in need of identifying and developing its future quarterback. Okay, you consider him a disciple of Bill’s, asking, understandably: ‘Why move on from the best coach ever to then turn to one of his own?’ And how about: ‘Will he go outside current or past Pats circles for coaches? Can he? Who will take over player personnel?’

All valid. And all, I trust, the Krafts considered.

“Jerod is an individual that, I think, has no ceiling for his ability to grow and how competent he is,” Robert Kraft said at last spring’s owners meetings. “We had the privilege of having him as a player, and I saw how intense he was, and his leadership skills that he had. And then I saw him leave us and go into private industry and learn the Xs and Os of business, and then come back to be a coach and do that with us.”

Of course, Mayo confronts an enormous learning curve. And faces major challenges trying to lead the Pats from 4-13, a third losing season in four years, back to expectations as a perennial Super Bowl contender.

Even if you consider Mayo’s time making checks at the line of scrimmage and leading in the locker and meeting rooms as a player as some measure of coaching equivalent, there’s no downplaying the enormity of his new undertaking; he’s still very new at this coaching thing.

But that doesn’t make him the wrong choice for this team, at this time. In Mayo, the Patriots have an exemplar of their best qualities of the past; who’s proven himself to be an out-of-box thinker and learner; who coaches, as he recently said, “out of love,” remaining “tough” while showing “warmth” and building “confidence”; who communicates and connects as a person in settings as diverse as the C-suite and team cafeteria; who has the character, intelligence and charisma to be both a constant and an agent for necessary change.

What’s more, if his past is a prelude, Mayo won’t be afraid of tackling that curve and those challenges cast in the hooded shadow hanging over the organization from the past 24 years; just as he wasn’t afraid, at 22, to knock on Bill’s door.

Speaking of Bill, Mayo described Belichick to Mukunda as “a continuous learner” always “trying to evolve.” As if talking about himself.

Mayo’s about to learn a lot on a new job, arguably, the toughest in sports, eight years after he retired from playing, prompting the legend he now succeeds to praise him at the 2016 owners meetings.

“There have been very few players in my career that I’ve had the opportunity to coach that I’d say had more of an impact on the team than Jerod has from day one, which is unusual,” Belichick said.

It’s day one of a new Patriots era, and an unusual person gets his shot to impact the team as its next head coach. I, for one, am excited to describe the days that follow – in my best announcer’s voice.

Bob Socci recently completed his 11th season as the play-by-play broadcaster for the Patriots Radio Network on 98.5 The Sports Hub in Boston.