Jerod Mayo's Patriots Spending Comments Come With a Major Complication

As the Wu-Tang Clan famously said, "Cash rules everything around me." It seems like the New England Patriots understand that reality ahead of the 2024 NFL offseason.

After what felt like an eternity in Foxborough, Bill Belichick has moved on. Jerod Mayo took over the franchise, and now he's tasked with moving the club back up the NFL pecking order. And, with all due respect to Belichick, the new bench boss has quite a challenge on his hands.

While the living legend will forever be associated with stars like Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski, more recent years left the Patriots' metaphorical cupboards rather bare. The lack of game-changing talent was most apparent under center, but it permeated the entire roster. Only one player, for example, tallied more than 500 receiving yards in 2023; two rushers were over 600 yards, but neither Ezekiel Elliott nor Rhamondre Stevenson set the league on fire. Defensively, things were a bit better, but there wasn't enough on that side of the ball to pick up the slack.

The new head coach seems well aware of that reality, and he's prepared to get things moving in the right direction.

"We're bringing in talent, 1,000 percent," Mayo on Monday said during a WEEI radio appearance. "We have a lot of cap space and cash. We're ready to burn some cash!"

And he's not wrong. Over The Cap pegs the Patriots' 2024 cap space at a shade over $66 million, the fourth-highest mark in the league. Their effective cap space, which considers a team's top-51 players and the projected rookie class, is a bit smaller, but $57 million still provides plenty of ammunition.

Add a third-overall draft pick into the mix—you'd think that would either bring a highly touted quarterback or receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. to Foxborough—and you'd think that New England is in a pretty good spot to start its rebuilding effort.

There is, however, a catch.

During his time with the Patriots, Belichick essentially acted as the team's general manager and handled personnel duties. And while he's moved on, the official GM role is still nowhere to be found in the team's front office structure.

That's not to say, however, that no one is working on that side of the organization. NBC Sports Boston's Phil Perry reported, "It's anticipated by team sources that both [director of player personnel] Matt Groh and [director of scouting] Eliot Wolf will remain with the Patriots and have prominent roles in personnel."

Christopher Price of The Boston Globe shared a similar perspective during a Reddit AMA.

"What we know at this point is that Matt Groh and Eliot Wolf are sort of working as co-GMs right. Mayo said this morning on WEEI they are assisting him with interviews," he wrote. "We'll see if that changes, but that's where we are at this point in the process."

Newsweek reached out to the Patriots on Monday via email, seeking official comment on who was handling the team's personnel decisions.

And that's where things get tricky. As anyone who's ever worked on a group project or watched a team-based reality competition show can confirm, someone ultimately has to call the shots.

It's possible that the Patriots have some sort of internal hierarchy, but having two (or three, if you include Mayo in the mix) people filling what would be the general manager's role sounds like a recipe for disaster. Having a sizable war chest is well and good, but that money actually needs to get spent. And since we're talking about a team that needs to retool across the roster, there's plenty of room for disagreement.

Should New England draft a quarterback, even if that means reaching for Jayden Daniels? Should they trade back? What about picking Harrison Jr. and chasing someone like Kirk Cousins or Baker Mayfield in free agency?

And on the subject of free agency, what's the best way to allocate the money? Beyond the quarterback/receiver question—you'd have to assume that whichever position isn't filled in the first round of the draft will become the top free-agent priority—what comes next?

L'Jarius Sneed, for example, has developed into a key contributor in Kansas City, and the Chiefs will have limited resources to work with. Do you try to tempt him to move east? Or is it more pressing to bring in another offensive piece, whether that's a tight end like Dalton Schultz or a lineman to help protect the new quarterback?

It goes without saying that those sorts of decisions need to be spot-on. By and large, organizations can handle a single bad season, but bad contracts can turn into long-term obstacles. And if there's disagreement over how resources are allotted, that has the possibility to affect things down the line.

Say, for whatever reason, the Patriots need another new coach in a few years. It would be less than ideal to hand that new leader a roster burdened by unmovable contracts and dead money.

There's also the possibility of a power vacuum, which Price also raised on Reddit.

"They need a GM in there, immediately. I kind of get what they are doing with a collaborative approach, but when the time comes, you need one person to make the final say," he wrote. "Who will it be? Mayo? Robert? Jonathan? Elliott? The longer you go without a GM, the greater the possibility is that you'll create a power vacuum, and then, someone who shouldn't be gaining power starts having a greater say in the organization. Not to default to the worst possible scenario, but look at the Jack Easterby situation in Houston. That might be an outlier, but certainly an example of what might happen if there aren't clearly drawn lines of power in the front office and personnel."

To be clear, you'd rather be rebuilding with cash and cap space than without it. But having all the money in the world is worthless without a good plan.

We'll have to wait and see how the Patriots front office fares in that regard.