New England has begun its search for a top-level football executive.
The New England Patriots have started the process of hiring a top executive overseeing their football operations. While director of scouting Eliot Wolf is the favorite to earn the job after having final say on personnel decisions in free agency and the draft, the club is still conducting a formal search.
One reason for that appears to be the NFL’s so-called Rooney Rule. It requires organizations to hold at least two in-person interviews with external minority and/or female candidates for top-level positions such as this one.
The Patriots, however, are already in compliance with the rule, per a report by Ben Volin of the Boston Globe. How they managed to satisfy those interview requirements is not known at this point.
The only external candidate linked to the search so far is Cincinnati Bengals executive Trey Brown, who reportedly turned down the opportunity to interview with the Patriots. New England also previously hired Alonzo Highsmith from the University of Miami to serve as a senior personnel executive.
The Patriots are in need of a so-called “primary football executive” after Bill Belichick left the organization in January. While the club promoted assistant coach Jerod Mayo to succeed Belichick as head coach — a stipulation embedded into his Mayo’s contract, thus satisfying the Rooney Rule — it left the top executive spot unoccupied. The aforementioned Eliot Wolf was given personnel control for the time being.
The belief is that he will eventually get elevated to that top executive position. Nevertheless, the requirements stated in the Rooney Rule need to be met as well.
That does not mean all interviews with qualifying candidates, or others, will be a sham: they still give aspiring executives an opportunity to present themselves, and possibly make themselves available for other positions in an organization in rebuild.
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