Did Jerod Mayo save his job Sunday against Buffalo?
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00:00Morning, Ian Rappaport had an updated report on Gerard Mayo's status within the New England Patriots organization
00:08and what the Crafts want for him in the future, if they want him to even have a future. Here was Rappsheet.
00:15Robert and Jonathan Craft, my understanding is they want Gerard Mayo to come back for a second season.
00:20They believe in Gerard Mayo. This was the handpicked leader of the organization to succeed Bill Belichick.
00:26Actually, so much so that they handpicked him to be the successor before Belichick's tenure was even done.
00:32A year before, remember, he played for them too. There's a lot of love for Gerard Mayo in the building.
00:37The Patriots and Robert Craft, Jonathan Craft specifically, also knew this would be a multi-year process.
00:43Knew that this year, just personnel-wise, would be tough. That said, as you sometimes see this time of year,
00:49there's going to be a lot of eyeballs on the way that they finish. If it all comes crashing down,
00:53if they really collapse, maybe somehow they think differently. The Patriots got a good result
00:59this past Sunday, taking the Bills right to the brink. You would think that specifically
01:04would show that Gerard Mayo has absolutely kept the attention of his players.
01:07So I ask you, Nick Fitzsie-Stevens, was the Buffalo Bills game enough
01:13for Gerard Mayo to keep his job this season?
01:16Believe it or not, the answer is yes.
01:18Interesting. Okay, explain.
01:20Because they came out urgent. They started prepared. They actually had energy and game script
01:26coming out of the tunnel. That did not look like a team that was ill-prepared for the moment.
01:30That did not look like a team that had quit on their coach. They did not start that game off
01:35in Buffalo as 14.5-point underdogs in 9-degree temperatures in a game where people thought
01:41it would be 35-0 at the half, the other team. They did not represent everything that we have said
01:48or believed to be bad about them over the last several weeks in the first half.
01:53And I think what you're going to see is that while, yes, they were not able to make the
01:56appropriate second-half adjustments, and they also coached more conservatively,
02:00I had begged them to please coach aggressively, coach to win. Stop with this coaching not to
02:05lose nonsense that they'd been doing for the last several weeks or months even.
02:10I think you'll see ownership say, look, they obviously can get these guys tuned up and ready
02:15to rock. We just now need to either bring in another great football mind or two, or more
02:20importantly, the talent to back up the game plans that they're trying to execute. So yes, I do.
02:26Honestly, it may not be what you want to hear, New England. It may not be what you love,
02:30Shyam. I'm just telling you right now that you will see at least Gerard Mayo come back. I can't
02:36guarantee all the coordinators are coming back. I'd probably say it's more probable than not,
02:40but yes, Mayo's return. They came out looking like a team that was playing for their coach,
02:46being on the hot seat. I feel like they knew he was on the hot seat and they knew they had to
02:49step it up to keep him around. So I don't even know that it was the players, but it felt more
02:54like the coaches felt like they were on the hot seat with the fake punt and the going forward on
02:59fourth down stuff. Like it felt to me like they were coaching scared, finally, like it took them
03:0616 weeks to finally do it when they should have been doing this weeks ago.
03:10You might have won a couple more football games, not a lot, but you might have won one or two more
03:13football games if you had been a little bit more aggressive at other times. There were
03:18opportunities to be more aggressive. You chose not to. You chose to be overly conservative all
03:23of the time. And because of that, it resulted in probably one or two losses that you could have
03:29turned into wins. And I'm curious, Fitz, do you think that ownership said something to them after
03:35we saw the whole Jonathan Kraft in the box thing in the Arizona game saying the offense stinks or
03:40the play calling stinks, whatever it was, and then this week coming out with the urgency? Do you think
03:45Robert and Jonathan said something to Gerard about having to come out with urgency this week?
03:50Is it just you and me? Just between us? Yeah. Yeah, I do. That's what I thought, too. Yeah,
03:56no, 100%. I mean, you can't have seen Jonathan's histrionics in the owner's box or the luxury suite
04:04in Arizona last week going off saying, like, Dad, they stink. Like, look at this play calling.
04:09It's terrible. What are we doing? And then see them being more aggressive next week. I 100%
04:14believe in the Mayo and ownership. Teta Tet they have every week. Yep. That they told them, like,
04:20guy, you got to stop this because also shine. Why? After being told that Alex Van Pelt was
04:25protecting Drake May from this offensive line, basically, and from his own play calling by not
04:31having any design runs. Did we see three on Sunday? Yeah. And then Mayo tried to bury it with
04:37we thought that was, you know, that was down a distance that was in the best interest of the
04:41football team. Come on. That's Gerard. Take it from somebody who has spent far too much time
04:48over the past two decades of his life trafficking in what people in Patriots Nation in New England
04:55at large have to say about their football team and what they want. They just want consistency
04:59of message, like playing the emotional leapfrog and hopping. It's like he does. He does like
05:06analytical dance dance revolution. He's like here. He's there. He's over here. He's over.
05:11He's back here. Like, no, stay in one spot and just say, this is how we coach.
05:16This is what kind of football team we are. This is what we're doing. I couldn't agree more.