The Patriots have officially solidified their leadership for the post-Bill Belichick era by naming Eliot Wolf as their executive VP of player personnel, nearly four months after hiring Jerod Mayo to succeed Belichick as head coach.
The process of filling these roles involved an unusually limited search. Due to a clause in Mayo’s contract that allowed the Patriots to bypass the Rooney Rule—which requires interviews with at least two external minority candidates for head coach positions—the team only interviewed two outside candidates for their effective GM position. The hiring process for Wolf appeared to be largely perfunctory, as predicted by several league insiders.
During the search, three executives—Trey Brown from the Bengals, Terrance Gray from the Bills, and Quentin Harris, formerly with the Cardinals—declined interview invitations. The Patriots interviewed Eagles scouting director Brandon Hunt and former Panthers executive Samir Suleiman, but neither interview took place at the team’s facility, and the candidates only met with the Krafts.
The search was widely expected to conclude with Wolf’s appointment. This brought the total number of external candidates interviewed for both the head coach and GM positions to just two. In contrast, the Panthers interviewed 11 candidates for head coach and eight for GM, the Chargers interviewed nine GM candidates and 13 for head coach, and the Commanders considered five GM and seven head coach candidates. The Raiders’ process was most similar to the Patriots’, interviewing only two head coach candidates and five for GM.
The Patriots had given Wolf a trial run as their acting personnel chief before the draft, making it unlikely they would replace him after allowing him to oversee the selection of quarterback Drake Maye (No. 3 overall pick) and rejecting trade offers from the Giants and Vikings. Many expected the Patriots to retain Wolf, who had been a finalist for the Bears and Vikings’ GM jobs in 2022 and had previously served as the No. 2 executive in Green Bay and Cleveland.
Wolf, 42, has restructured the Patriots’ scouting system, adopting the Packers’ model and altering the workflow to have both Wolf and Mayo report directly to ownership. While this format can lead to conflicts, it mirrors the structure used by other teams where both the head coach and GM report to ownership rather than following a top-down approach.
Before Belichick’s departure, Matt Groh was his top assistant. The Patriots have employed Wolf since 2020, but the Krafts decided to promote him over Groh to their top front office position. Groh remains with the organization, but Wolf, with likely more involvement from ownership compared to the Belichick era, will lead the team forward.
The lack of a comprehensive search process in appointing Mayo and Wolf is a notable aspect as the team embarks on its first season without Belichick.
