Patriots “Once we turn this around, we’ll be fine.” Bill Belichick has been an outspoken critic of Jerod Mayo over the past week. Mark Brown/Getty Images
FOXBOROUGH — Bill Belichick clearly has a bone to pick with Jerrod Mayo and the Patriots are fired in January.
After Mayo opened himself up to criticism by initially calling the Patriots a “soft” team on Sunday, Belichick took several opportunities to call out New England’s new coach and defend his former players.
“I feel bad for those guys because I called them soft — they’re not soft, they were the best team in the league last year against the run,” Belichick said of his former players Monday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee” show. Shows.” “Those guys went out there and did it even though we couldn’t score a lot of points offensively, so I don’t know — I feel bad for the defensive players in that game because that’s a tough group.”
Belichick continued his attack against Mayo on Monday night during an appearance on “Let’s Go!” Podcast with Jim Gray and Tom Brady.
“I think when you publicly criticize your team like that, it doesn’t always go over well,” Belichick said. “Now, every coach has his own style, and maybe sometimes that can be effective, but in the end I always felt that when the team played poorly, it was my responsibility as well.
We may have played poorly, but we had bad training that led to bad play. So I think it’s always best to take a look at yourself and do what you can do to help the team. And then, you know, if you have constructive criticism as a coach, that’s your job.
Speaking on Wednesday morning, Mayo was asked if he was disappointed to see his former coach level multiple criticisms at him.
In perhaps his most fitting tribute to Belichick, Mayo chose to look forward rather than harp on the verbal criticism leveled against him.
“Like I said, my main focus is the people inside this building,” Mayo noted. “Not just the players, but the coaches and the rest of the staff. Once we turn that around, we’ll be fine. It’s about wins and losses. Like, that’s what it comes down to and that’s what you’re judged on in the end.”
For most of Wednesday’s news conference, Mayo made a strong impression of Belichick’s tried-and-true media maneuvers — shifting talk of his comments and last week’s loss to the Jaguars to focus on New England’s upcoming home game against the Jets.
“The message to these guys is it’s all about the planes, and we’re moving forward,” Mayo said. “Obviously there’s a lot of noise out there. I said, ‘We are what our record is. We’ve got to get better. And that’s ultimately my responsibility. And look, I take all the blame. That’s OK. It’s moving toward the Jets.’
Even with Belichick’s pointed comments, veteran defensive tackle Davon Godchaux said he didn’t take much from Belichick and Mayo’s recent quotes about the team.
“I don’t think Bell means any harm,” Godchaux said, according to Alex Barth of 98.5 The Sports Hub. “I think people took it the wrong way…just like I think people took Jerrod the wrong way [calling the team soft]”.
While some of the aforementioned “noise” that Mayo described as self-inflicted following his live postgame comments on Sunday, a pair of Patriots wide receivers made their coach’s job more difficult due to social media.
Mayo was forced to field questions Monday about rookie Ja’Lynn Polk’s mysterious Instagram post after a disappointing game in London and KJ Osborn posted an exchange between him and sports agent Brandon Abdullah about his role on the team’s depth chart.
Even with those distractions, Mayo stressed Wednesday that the Patriots will not change their stance on social media use or implore players to avoid using it as an outlet moving forward.
“For me, that’s the way it is,” Mayo said. “Like if you’re winning games, there’s going to be hype. I mean, we’ve done this for a long time. It’s very cyclical. Sometimes novels are already written, and they’re about a different set of characters.”
“What I would say is we know that the only people who can go out and win football games — it’s not the media, it’s not your mom calling you and telling you X, Y and Z, or whoever is at the grocery store. No, it’s about the guys in this building.
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Connor Ryan is a staff writer covering the Bruins, Celtics, Patriots and Red Sox for Boston.com, a role he has held since 2023.
