Patriots Sources Describe the Chaos and Lack of Communication on Jerod Mayo's Watch
Like I said yesterday, when a football team fires its head coach after just one season, you can mark your calendar for three days. That's how long it typically takes for the anonymous sources to pull the knives out of their sheaths and start back-stabbing. So this was no surprise:
Given that Jerod Mayo was fired during the first commercial break at the end of the game Sunday, it was a mortal lock that would just be the first of many. Now courtesy of the Boston Herald, we've got another:
It's a long and comprehensive article, and Callahan and Kyed did a thorough job. Too thorough to put much of a dent in it in blog length. Especially given that a fair amount of it is part of the shared experience of all of us in 2024, and stuff I've included here before. So instead I'll boil it down to the quotes from sources that detail just what an immersive, 360-degree, 3-D, IMAX, surround sound shitshow this was.
While some acknowledged - correctly - that Jerod Mayo was rushed through the process (something Mr. Kraft himself admitted to the team and again at his press conference), inherited one of the worst rosters in football, and was put in (RKK's own word) "untenable" situation), he got a lot to answer for. Again, these are the words of eyewitnesses inside the walls of One Patriots Place:
Some described a cocksure rookie coach who couldn’t get his arms around the job and majored in mixed messages.
“He kept talking about these North Stars,” a team source said. “And all of us in the building were like, ‘What are they? Can you share them with us? What’s the goal? What’s the vision here?’”
“Discipline is mandatory when you have a young team, so we don’t try to cut corners or slip through the cracks and stuff like that,” a veteran player said. “And I feel like that’s really what happened (with Mayo).”
In the leadup to kickoff [of the Week 17 game], Mayo had told the national television broadcast and the Patriots’ local radio team [Rhamondre] Stevenson would be benched after fumbling seven times. According to sources, Mayo had told offensive coordinator Alex Van Pelt to sit Stevenson shortly before the game but that order, which was supposed to be relayed to running backs coach Taylor Embree, failed to reach Stevenson. …
“(The coaches) were all kind of getting their reps,” a team source said.
[O]ccasionally, the receivers didn’t even show up. … Tyquan Thornton was late to the facility and didn’t practice, according to sources, who added Thornton had checked out mentally after it was clear he wouldn’t play anymore.
Sources also confirmed [rookie Javon] Baker missed bedcheck the night before the Patriots’ mid-October game in London, something Mayo later denied. Come kickoff, Baker was inactive.
“The issue was (Baker) didn’t understand why,” a team source said. “He was intending to be back on time, but he wasn’t. For him, he wasn’t in the wrong, because he was trying to be back on time.”
[A source described] past interactions Mayo had with staff members by saying: “He would ask anyone, ‘what do you think is the answer here? What do you think of this problem, what can we do to solve this?’ And he would listen to the person give their answer and then say something to the effect of, ‘Well, let me tell you why you’re wrong.’ ”
“It felt like (Mayo)’s personality for the first six months was not being Bill (Belichick). Through OTAs, training camp, some players started to test where the line was going to be. They just kept moving over where they thought the line was, but he never came in and said, ‘OK, that’s enough. That was the line,’” a team source said.
“It just kept getting further away from a happy medium that should have existed between how tight Bill kept things and where they ended up.”
“We’ve got guys who can’t get on the field because they can’t get lined up. Obviously, yeah, that's the coaches’ job, too,” another source began, “but how many times can you tell a guy where to line up?”
“You get selfish guys like that being the ‘leaders,’ or at least influencers within the locker room,” one staffer said. “It’s s—y.”
“At a certain point, it’s like, I don’t care what you’re saying, coach,” one player admitted. “It’s just hard to get to us if they’re not seeing any results.”
Why go on?
You get the picture. This isn't like one of those dubious, factually inaccurate hatchet pieces from the Belichick Era, where ESPN or Sports Illustrated or somebody would run quotes from a disgruntled former employee as some sort of grievance session (looking at you, Jack Easterby) and pretend it's journalism.
All these quotes are doing it confirming what we all saw and heard. Whether it was from the training camp sessions, the stands, our TV screens, the stats sheets or the media hits. You could detect it with all five senses. Including smell and taste, since this team stunk and we've all soured on it. (See how I got myself out of that rhetorical trap? There's the OB Difference at work.) We heard the convoluted messaging that changed from day to day. Plus the boos and Jahlani Tavai telling us to "know our place." Saw the lack of discipline manifest itself in players not knowing where to line up, etc. Read the body language of the young wide receivers mentally checked out. Watched guys not knowing where to line up, even on the most basic of formations, even deep into the season. And touched all the screens we needed to turn off the game, sell our tickets, and take to X to complain about how awful this all was.
Sincerely, I'm grateful for any team sources who are talking and everyone who's reporting these things. After consecutive 4-13 seasons, we need this. Deserve it. The Patriots public has a right to know what's been going on behind the scenes in order to see from the outside looking in that the days of this kind of mismanagement after over for at least another 25 years. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Let's keep these reports coming.