This Seems Like Good a Time as Any to Talk About Which Patriots Coaches Will Be Fired Soon

I was looking forward to watching the entirety of this Jerod Mayo interview, if for no other reason than to break up ridiculously late bye week in which the only news has been another loss followed by Mayo saying something he later said he wished he hadn't:

Which is pretty much the doom loop we've been in all season since that Week 1 win over Cincinnati, which feels like 10 lifetimes ago. 

But truthfully, Mayo didn't add a lot to the discussion. He didn't say anything regrettable. He just didn't shed much light on another dark, dingy season. He talks to ownership after every game. Promises he'll do a better job next year. He tries to shut out criticism and stay positive. But everything sucks when you're losing. That sort of thing. 

To me, the one noteworthy part was this:

Tell me you're going to start focusing on 2025 without saying "We're onto 2025." Which to be clear, I'm all for. The Pats have four games left on the schedule. Three are against playoff teams (the Chargers and the Bills twice) and a .500 team that's still in the hunt (at the Cardinals). So ending the season with seven straight losses to finish 3-14 is not just a real possibility; it's a probability. So by all means, play the rookies. Empty the bench. He who was last shall now be first, and all that. The time to start seeing what, if anything, you can get out of these guys is now. I mean, it should've started in September. But it is most definitely now. 

Which begs the question of who on this coaching staff will still be here once this four-game audition/evaluation process is concluded. 

Earlier in the week, Mike Reiss said in no uncertain terms there will be changes. Which has long been a tradition in Foxboro to talk about in early December. Granted, it used to be because we'd be wondering which assistants would get hired to run some other franchise or college program in a desperate attempt to replicate the Patriots success. But Josh McDaniels flaming out in Las Vegas pretty much ended that. And Bill O'Brien going to Boston College makes him the last dinosaur of desirable Patriots assistants. Now it's just an annual exercise in figuring out who needs to pay the price for their failures. 

So let's examine the major players on this current staff and figure out who's mostly likely to be handed a moving box and told to pack their shit on NFL Black Monday:

Mayo. I share everybody else's frustration with a lot of his in-game decisions. One consistent thread throughout the season has been his game management, particularly at the end of the half. If you told me they announce the 2:00 warning by breaking a 2x4 over his head, I wouldn't argue with you, based solely on his use of timeouts. And it's clear any time he's facing an established coach with a finely tuned system, Mayo is completely outmatched. But to his credit, he's never lost the locker room. There hasn't been one player or anonymous team source that's bad mouthed him. He seems to enjoy universal respect inside the building. And the other stuff can be figured out with experience (witness Andy Reid's pre-Patrick Mahomes clock management). But regardless, there's no way the Krafts would ever consider letting him go after spending years grooming him to be Heir to the Throne of their empire. For better or worse, with or without the support of most Pats fans:

OC Alex Van Pelt. Although it's been said, many times, many ways, I don't know exactly what Van Pelt's system is supposed to look like. At least not when it's fully operational. It's hard to gauge when 47% or whatever of your dropbacks are under pressure and there are games when your running game is either ineffective or irrelevant because you're down 31-0. All we know for sure is it's meant to be some offshoot of the West Coast, which he ran alongside Kevin Stefanik in Cleveland. That his offense is currently 31st in points per game with 17.0. But that figure is still 3.1 per game more than last year. And while the Pats are scoring more on his watch, the Browns are down 4.6 PPG year-to-year. Yes, there are a ton of variables there, but still. More importantly, AVP's offense is trending up, 24th in PPG in the league over the last three games. Which is no reason to hire a caterer and rent a bouncy castle, but it IS progress. Most importantly, and in spite of everything, he's developing Drake Maye. It's possible he's holding him back and there's some coordinator out there who'd be doing a better job of it if only he were made head coach. But the fact remains that Maye has been a revelation. And I say again, if the rookie likes working with Van Pelt (and by extension, QB coach TC McCartney) and thinks he's being brought along well, then his is the only vote that counts. Besides, the whole organization could use some consistency at this position. Fire Van Pelt and you've not only subjected Maye to learning his fourth system in four seasons (going back to UNC), you're making veterans like Rhamondre Stevenson, Hunter Henry, and Michael Onwenu work with their fifth coordinator in five years. Enough, already. Van Pelt gets another season. 

OL coach Scott Peters. Here's where this gets dicey. Is the utter failure of the offensive line on the offensive line coach, or on Eliot Wolf for halfassing the offensive line? There are indigenous peoples on remote islands who have had minimal contact with the outside world who recognized that addressing this position group was a top priority. But with the second highest cap space in the league, The Wolf chose to sign Chukwuma Okorafor. Whom Peters started the season at left tackle, only to last 12 snaps before being benched and then released. When Wolf handed Peters Demontrey Jacobs (his first NFL action) a week later he was moved to LT and assigned to block Joey Bosa, with predictably disastrous results. We can blame Wolf for a lot of it. But all the unforced errors, presnap penalties, false starts and illegal formations? That's on coaching. I don't know what even the Patron Saint of O-line Coaching Dante Scarnecchia could do with this lot. But we can say with a moral certainty that Vederian Lowe drawing three false start flags in a single game was never going to happen on his watch. A change here has to be made.

WR coach Tyler Hughes. It's not easy to evaluate how much the failure of the wide receivers is on the position coach or the scheme. But it's super easy to evaluate the failure of the wide receiver group, which has been pretty close to total. Tyquan Thornton was the consenus WR1 when the season began, and was a healthy scratch several times before being released. For a while we toyed with the idea of Kayshon Boutte becoming that guy as he made a couple of big catches. But his catch % is 85th at his position, and his drop % is 12th highest. But the biggest job for Hughes this year was to develop the two rookie wideouts all that draft capital was invested in. We're 13 games into the season and Ja'Lynn Polk (37th overall pick) has 87 yards on 12 receptions. While Javon Baker (110th) has nothing to show but one target. Whatever kind of hand Hughes was dealt, that's just unacceptable. 

DC Demarcus Covington. I've already let AVP off the hook because one year is not enough time with a coordinator. But Covington probably doesn't get the same consideration. The logic being that he wasn't brought in to install a brand new system. He was promoted from defensive line coach to run the system that's been in place since Romeo Crennel came to our shores in 2000. And the drop off from last season to this has been remarkable. Maybe "shocking" is not too strong a word. I don't think any of us saw this coming. They've gone from being 6th in the league in yards allowed (301.6 per game) in 2023 to 20th (340.2 PPG). And in points allowed, fallen from 14th (21.5 PPG) to 20th (23.6 PPG). Not only has that been trending badly for Covington, as they've allowed 29.0 PPG over the last three weeks, it should only get worse as they still have those two games against Buffalo, who's No. 2 in scoring. Covington has been working with Mayo in one capacity or another for the better part of eight years, so cutting him loose after one year as the DC probably won't be his first choice. But when the team's area of strength has been turning more and more into a weakness as the season has progressed regressed, change is in order. As Michael Corleone put it, "Somebody has to answer for Sonny." Covington is likely to be the Patriots Carlo.

How much deeper the cuts go than these names, we'll have to wait and see. All we know for sure is that, when you (probably) go 3-14 a season after firing the best coach in history for going 4-13, no one's job is safe.