What Joe Mazzulla learned from Patriots meetings with Jerod Mayo

Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla has attended Patriots practice multiple times over the past few years.

He has been at training camp with Bill Belichick and has attended meetings with Jerod Mayo.

“Joe’s been great,” Mayo said. “I think I told you guys, Joe and I, before he became the head coach, we had a relationship. He would sit in the defensive meetings and we would talk about philosophical things, philosophy. Team sports are team sports. It’s great.”

Mazzulla spoke about what he learned from those defensive meetings earlier this week.

“I think you can learn a lot from those,” Mazzulla said, according to MassLive’s Souichi Terada. “Pre-snap communication, how they disguise their defenses — start one, flex into another one. What their different situational defenses are.

“All those things are super important,” Mazzulla added. “It’s been great being able to see how you can factor those into disguising what your defense looks like at the beginning of a possession. Maybe you go to something different later in the possession.”

Mazzulla draws from various sources to drill home messages to Celtics players.

Sometimes he takes tips from Manchester City soccer coach Pep Guardiola. Sometimes he shows the team videos of killer whales. He even broke down film of a Red Sox loss over the summer.

Mayo has a growing reputation as a player’s coach. Defensive tackle Davon Godchaux said Patriots players would run through a brick wall for him when Mayo appeared on his podcast earlier this month.

Mazzulla said he learned from watching how Mayo manages relationships with players.

“Relationship management,” Mazzulla said. “I’ve learned from him relationship management is important, communication is important, and just being innovative in how you go about it. There’s never one way of doing it, so it’s good seeing him in his environment being able to learn from that.”

Mayo said he has made a habit of taking notes in a little red notebook during games. When asked what he’s trying to glean from his note-taking as a defensive-minded coach watching opposing offenses, Mayo said:

“Even the defensive-minded or offensive-minded coaches kind of get a little wonky in my head. What I would say is, football is football. The game is about space, and I try to explain that to the coaches, I try to explain it to the players, even my son.”

“Most of these team sports are about space. So, obviously, you can look at football: 3×1 is obviously, it’s about space. But the same thing in hockey. Sometimes I’ll watch hockey, and they’ll overload a side, and they’ll have a guy over here. Now, depending on who this guy is over here, you’ve got to make a choice defensively.”

Mayo used Celtics star Jayson Tatum as an example while explaining how spacing applies in both football and basketball.

 “If you have Jayson Tatum over here versus someone who’s not really a scorer and we overload a side, you’ve got to make a choice,” Mayo said. “We’re going to double-team Jayson Tatum and be short over here on the overload side, or we’ll just try to play it straight, and this guy now has a 1-on-1. All these games, same thing in soccer, it’s about space. Overload a side, cross it, do whatever, but it’s about numbers and space.”