Are you Team Belichick or Team Mayo?
For better or worse, this became part of the discourse after the New England Patriots’ 32-16 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars in London. The humiliating defeat prompted coach Jerrod Mayo to declare the Patriots “a soft football team across the board,” which prompted his predecessor, Bill Belichick, to defend his former players with a bit of revisionist history.
Former Patriots safety Devin McCourty has been watching all this drama from afar, and he wants it to stop.
“I hate to see the way that when Mayo talks, it kind of turns into: ‘Well, he’s kind of taking a shot at Bell.’” “Bill talking, he’s kind of taking a shot at Mayo,” McCourty told Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio.
“Those two — we used to call Jerrod, ‘Jerod Belichick.’ We used to say he was like Bill’s long-lost son because of who he was and how similar he was to Bill as a player, so I hate to see the way this all unfolded, they’re not kind of close.” And Giroud can do that. Don’t call Bill a former teammate, a coach, and then your former head coach.
“I hate that part of this, so I hope they work this out and we stop seeing this kind of nuanced back and forth in the media.”
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Mayo admitted this offseason that he hasn’t spoken to Belichick since the legendary coach was replaced in January, so there’s clearly a distance between the two that may have made it easier for Belichick to criticize the former midfielder and assistant coach.
But while McCourty initially criticized Mayo for calling up his own players rather than accepting responsibility for his team’s struggles, McCourty thought Belichick was being a bit disingenuous when he said he felt “bad” for the Patriots’ players (and also failed to mention several key game absences). Team defense.
“I’ve never heard Bill say he felt bad or hurt towards any player, so that was funny to me. But it’s interesting because they also don’t have a Jawaun Bentley; they don’t have a Jawaun Bentley,” McCourty said. “I don’t have Christian Barmore, and I think one of the things that always sticks with me is Coach Belichick always tells us, ‘Don’t tell me what you did last year.’ Every team is different. Every season is different.”
Mayo are getting a crash course in coaching this season; His team has lost six in a row, his players publicly question each other’s commitment and he comes under fire from his former boss. A win would go a long way toward helping Mayo right the ship, but even against the 2-5 New York Jets, the Patriots enter Week 8 as seven-point underdogs.
