Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots have decided to part ways after 24 seasons and six Super Bowl titles together. Now, the team has reportedly found its successor right in its home locker room. Former Patriot standout — and current linebackers coach — Jerod Mayo will take over the head coaching position, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. The Patriots side-stepped interviewing rules, as they implemented the path to the succession plan last year when Mayo crafted his extension with the team. The news is expected to be confirmed next week in a team press conference. In addition to six Lombardi trophies won, Belichick led the Patriots to 333 career victories (including playoffs), 17 AFC East division titles, the most by a head coach in league history, and nine conference championships, the most by a head coach in the Super Bowl era. “I will always be a Patriot,” Belichick said at a Thursday press conference. “I look forward to coming back here. But at this time, we’re going to move on. I’m excited about the future.” Mayo will become the first Black head coach in New England Patriots history.

Google has laid off hundreds of employees across its hardware, voice assistance, and engineering teams as part of increased cost-cutting measures, the tech corporation confirmed to Reuters on Thursday. As of September 2023, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, had 182,381 employees worldwide. Additionally, the co-founders of Fitbit — Google bought Fitbit in 2021 for $2.1 billion — James Park and Eric Friedman are also leaving the company. The cuts continue a recent trend of tech layoffs after large companies such as Google, Meta, and Amazon started 2024 by dismissing hundreds of their own respective employees recently.

On Thursday, the NFL announced the “home” teams for the league’s European games during the 2024 season. London will feature separate games with the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings hosting at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, while the Jacksonville Jaguars will play at Wembley Stadium. The league’s final international contest of the 2024 campaign will see the Carolina Panthers travel to Munich. Their respective opponents, kickoff times, and dates will be announced this spring. NFL clubs recently voted to increase league-operated international games from four to up to eight in a season, beginning in 2025.

Major League Soccer wants to allow aspiring entrepreneurs to showcase their ingenious products. On Thursday, the league unveiled the MLS Innovation Lab, a program permitting startups the league could potentially invest in to demonstrate their products in front of league and team executives at three key events. After whittling the list of small businesses down to six for Thursday’s announcement, three of them will advance to MLS All-Star in Columbus this July, where they’ll present to the MLS Board of Governors. Once the league selects which companies to invest in, the process of selecting applicants will restart in the fall.

Boardroom’s Shlomo Sprung spoke with league executives about the MLS Innovation Lab, including highlighting the six startups that made the cut.

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the 2024 NBA Draft is preparing to move to two days on June 26-27. However, Woj added that the league is still working on the approval of the Players Association. Should the league receive final sign-off, 2024 would mark the first multi-day draft in the history of the NBA. Commissioner Adam Silver teased that this change was coming during an interview with SiriusXM NBA in December, naming off the benefits, such as time for announcers and the media to better understand who those players are, among other advantages.

According to data released Thursday by the Labor Department, US consumer prices grew slightly faster in December, capping off a year that saw plummeting inflation. Per the posted earnings summary, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the average price changes for commonly purchased goods and services, rose 0.3% in December from November, slightly higher than the projected 0.2%. Overall, in 2023, the CPI closed up 3.4%.