Patriots Coach Jerod Mayo Clears Air About Dont’a Hightower Hire

Nearly a decade after playing their final Patriots season together, Jerod Mayo and Dont’a Hightower now are both working in New England once again.

Nearly a month after Mayo replaced Bill Belichick as Patriots head coach, Hightower joined the staff as the inside linebackers coach. Hightower does not have any coaching experience, but he was an exceptional ‘backer in Foxboro, Mass., for nine seasons and was a major contributor to three Super Bowl-winning teams.

It’s justified to question how Hightower will fare as a coach given his inexperience. But make no mistake, this latest chapter was something the two-time Pro Bowl selection had been plotting for a while.

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“We’ve been talking about this for a while. I’ll be honest with you. We’ve been talking about it for a while,” Mayo told reporters Wednesday, per the Boston Herald. “Hightower has always really wanted to coach. He was a coach on the field. Obviously, he took the torch and ran with it. As far as the championships and the leadership skills that he has, it was very important, but it wasn’t like a yesterday, ‘Hey man, you want to be my linebacker coach’? This was an extensive search.”

Mayo very well might have looked around for his inside linebackers coach, but Hightower surely was a frontrunner from the get-go. All the way back in April 2023, Mayo expressed his expectation for Hightower to be a “very good” coach someday and revealed he would recruit his old teammate whenever the time came.

Now, the pair of former Patriots LBs will try to lead a strong defense that figures to be vital to New England’s success in 2024.