Turns out Jerod Mayo wasn’t completely wrong when he made his much-analyzed comment about the New England Patriots being “soft.” It’s just that he directed his Insta-slam post at the wrong people: If only he had aimed it at Patriots legends instead of Patriots players, Mayo would be getting saluted in every port of call in Football America.
The Patriots legends of whom we speak are Robert Kraft, the no-doubt-about-it savior of the franchise whose vision and business acumen are why the NFL has a team called the “New England Patriots” and not a team called the “St. Louis Stallions” or whatever they would have been called if only the late James Busch Orthwein had had his way.
The other legend is Bill Belichick, the no-doubt-about-it greatest coach in NFL history whose two decades of point/counterpoint with Tom Brady produced six Super Bowl victories. (And if you’re in the Belichick-is-overrated-
But two things can be true at once. Yes, Belichick is a sure-as-shootin’ Hall of Fame coach, and, yes, Kraft should have received his Canton kiss years ago, but in recent weeks these two fellas have been presenting themselves as a couple of needy, insecure old men.
Caught in the middle of all this Kraft-Belichick whining and caterwauling is Mayo, whose focus is the 2024 Patriots. As opposed to the 83-year-old Kraft and the 72-year-old Belichick, who can’t move on from the 2019 through 2023 Patriots.
It begins with Kraft, who wants to take his share of credit for the good things that have happened with the 21st-century Patriots while also making it sound like he was in the other room whenever the bad stuff happened.
But Kraft was definitely out to lunch when he went on “The Breakfast Club” and said, “Our record the last three to four years wasn’t what I wanted. And I had given him (Belichick) so much power. He had full control over everything. And shame on me, I should’ve had some checks and balances better.”
Nobody needed a secret decoder ring to translate what Kraft was saying, which is that Belichick screwed everything up when the owner had his back turned.
These words from Kraft provided a hold-my-beer moment for Belichick, who proved he could be even needier and more insecure than his former boss.
“I’m kind of hurt for those guys,” Belichick said during his appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.”
“To call them soft — they’re not soft. They were the best team in the league last year against the run, and those guys went out there and did it even though we couldn’t score many points offensively.”
“The Patriots led the league in rushing defense last year and they still have a lot of those players..
I’m hurt for those guys because they’re not soft..
I feel bad for the defensive players because they’re all tough players” ~ Bill Belichick #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/wVN9ufcNMg
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) October 21, 2024
Again, you don’t need a secret decoder ring. Belichick was nominally speaking about Mayo, but he was really speaking to Kraft, essentially saying, “That’s what you get for firing me.”
Belichick was also speaking to former players of his when he said, “I feel bad for the defensive players on that one because that’s a tough group. Jon Jones, (Davon) Godchaux, Jennings, Josh Uche. Those are all tough players.”
Secret decoder ring: You guys miss me, right?
Belichick is being paid handsomely to be opinionated and provocative. He throws in the neediness and score-settling for free. As for Kraft, I can’t help but feel everything he says is designed to bolster his Hall of Fame candidacy, except that the attempts come across as needless and clunky. Kraft should be judged on his record, not his reminders.
Besides, if Kraft truly believes it was a missing system of checks and balances that doomed the Patriots in the last years of the Belichick era, he’d have made sure to help out his new coach, Mayo, with some of those checks and balances. Years ago when the Red Sox hired 28-year-old Theo Epstein to be their general manager, they brought in the late Bill Lajoie, a seasoned baseball man who’d help build a World Series winner in Detroit, as a “special assistant.” Alex Cora, in his first year as manager of the Red Sox, brought in Ron Roenicke as his bench coach. Roenicke had managed the Milwaukee Brewers for four-plus seasons, as well as managing the Dodgers’ Double-A San Antonio club in 1997 when 21-year-old Alex Cora was his shortstop.
Other than Ben McAdoo and his two seasons as head coach of the New York Giants, there’s not much in the way of seasoned perspective on the 2024 Patriots. Some of that is on Mayo. Mostly it’s on ownership, which oversaw a rebuild of the front office and coaching staff.
As for Belichick, his cute little dog-whistling fools nobody. In calling out Mayo, he’s exposing his own softness.
The referendum on Jerod Mayo’s tenure as head coach of the Patriots will likely continue for what’s left of this season and into the offseason. But, really, it’s pointless. It behooves the Patriots to see what Mayo can accomplish with a year’s worth of head-coaching acumen on his resume. It behooves the Patriots to work with Mayo and executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf to add some been-there-done-that to the coaching staff and front office.
And it would behoove Mayo to a) improve his messaging, and b) while I have everyone’s attention, perhaps try being a little more aggressive with the play calling. You know, surprise us now and then.
Lastly, it would behoove Kraft and Belichick to take their little squabble out to the schoolyard and stop dragging Mayo into it. He has in-the-moment, grown-up things to do.
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(Photo of Bill Belichick, Jerod Mayo and DeMarcus Covington: Perry Knotts / Getty Images)
