the greg hill show: patriots head coach jerod mayo joins the show
Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo has a lot on his plate heading into his first season at the helm in Foxborough. He’s in the process of revamping the coaching staff, has “cash to burn” in free agency, and holds the No. 3 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft.
Mayo now also has a weekly radio appearance on his schedule. Beginning in August, New England's new head coach will join WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show every Monday throughout the season. We got a sneak peek into "Mayo Mondays" this week, and the new HC of the NEP got candid about the leadership of his current team, specifically at the quarterback position:
"We have a lot of guys," he told the show when asked about the Patriots' current core. "I'm not sure what [Matthew] Slater's going to do, but for a long time, he's been a great leader in that locker room. We have leaders defensively. We have [Deatrich] Wise, we have [Ja'Whaun] Bentley."
Mayo continued: "You look at the offensive side of the ball, however you want to slice it, whoever the quarterback is... the quarterback has to have some type of leadership ability and, hopefully we can get to that point where-- David Andrews great leader on the offensive side of the ball as well, Hunter Henry great leader on the offensive side of the ball. But what I will say is, it's hard to lead through tough times. And that's when you really start to see people change. You really start to see the attitudes change. People getting in small huddles and things like that, and that's when people are looking for a leader. When everything is not going right they're looking for a leader. When you're winning games it's easy, like, 'C'mon guys family on three: One two three family!', and then you go on a six-game losing streak and you're like forget it."
He was then asked specifically about Mac Jones and if the quarterback struggled in a leadership role in his third NFL season:
"I’m not saying that," Mayo explained. "What I will say is, when I think about Mac, he obviously has talent– and once again we’re in the evaluation phase. I will say with that, you know, the confidence of a player is very fragile, especially with these players now– like I’m an old man or something like that. But confidence goes a lot way and honestly as I continue to evaluate, as we continue to evaluate as a coaching staff, we’ll see. But you know these guys can play football, like they’re here for a reason. It’s not like we went over to Brockton High School and just pulled some people over here, right? These guys are players and at the end of the day there has to be a shared vision, there has to be– you know the players really have to feel like they’re being heard. They have to feel like they have some stake in the gameplan so if it doesn’t go right, the accountability piece starts to show up. If you just throw some pages at [them], you know ‘Here, this is what we’re doing this week,’ not saying that that’s what we’ve done, but defensively we’ve always tried to take the input of the players, and they’re on the field…"
So from a coaching staff perspective, does Mayo think the Patriots let Mac Jones down?
"The thing I would say is, if you were to ask Mac Jones, he made mistakes along the way as well," said Mayo. "The coaching staff, we made mistakes along the way as well and I’m not just talking about the offensive coaching staff. One thing about Mac, you know everybody talks to Mac. Special teams, defensive players, offensive players and we were trying to help him with that confidence but I think everyone has– there’s enough blame to go around."
Mayo also spoke about New England’s plans in free agency, the NFL Draft, and more on Monday’s edition of WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show. You can listen to the full interview here.
Make sure to follow Mike on Twitter @mikekadlick, and follow @WEEI for the latest up-to-date Patriots and Boston sports news!
Related
