On Monday morning, Jerod Mayo made his weekly radio appearance on The Greg Hill Show as a part of WEEI’s “Patriots Monday” coverage.
A majority of this conversation was about the starting quarterback position for the Patriots, and why Mayo was planning on sticking with nine-year veteran Jacoby Brissett over rookie Drake Maye.
“What I’m doing is what I think is best for the Patriots today, and also in the future,” said Mayo. “And that’s how I have to look at these things.”
“Best for the Patriots today” is the part that many fans might disagree with, as the Patriots have now lost three in a row to fall to 1-3 on the season. Sunday’s loss in San Francisco was in blowout fashion, as the 49ers rolled the Patriots 30-13.
New England’s upcoming Week 5 matchup with the Dolphins (1-3) is a spot fans and media alike have been calling for as the perfect time to debut Maye as the starting quarterback moving forward. And with Miami’s recent struggles at quarterback as they continue looking for a viable stand-in for the injured Tua Tagovailoa, the calls for this semi-soft landing spot for Maye’s first start have gotten even louder.
Part of the rationale behind calling for a Week 5 debut for Maye as the starter was the idea that the Kraft family would want the rookie’s first game to come at home against an opponent the struggling Patriots had a good chance of beating. The idea is that creating a “Maye Day” event would add buzz to a stadium that has lost a lot of it since Tom Brady’s final game as a Patriot during the 2019 playoffs.
With Mayo and the Krafts having a well-documented close relationship, many have wondered if the Krafts now have the ability to make that type of football decision - something that would have been unheard of during the Bill Belichick Era at 1 Patriot Place.
“Do the Krafts have a say?” WEEI’s Courtney Cox asked Mayo during his Monday interview. “Does Robert come to you? Does Jonathan come to you?”
Mayo quickly answered, “Look, Thunder and Jonathan, you know - and I appreciate them throughout this entire season and process. They really leave the football decisions to Eliot [Wolf] and myself. So it’s been good.”
“Thunder,” of course, is Mayo’s nickname for team owner Robert Kraft, which he talked about in detail during his introductory press conference in January. “Thunder” is actually the shortened version of the full nickname, “Young Thundercat.”
When you give your friend a nickname for their nickname, you know you’re good buddies.
So do we buy that the first-year head coach who calls his 83-year-old boss “Young Thundercat” isn’t being given directives by an ownership group who has known him since he was a 22-year-old first round pick out of Tennessee?
This is the same ownership group that told Amazon Prime Video in Week 3 that they selected Mayo to be their next head coach five years ago, meaning they knew he was the heir apparent to Belichick during his first year coaching football at any level, as an inside linebackers coach on the 2019 Patriots defensive staff.
It was made abundantly clear during “The Dynasty: New England Patriots” on Apple TV+ that Kraft and Belichick weren’t exactly sharing notes on football ideas, especially towards the end of the professional relationship.
But with Mayo and “Thunder” having the relationship they have, it doesn’t seem impossible to believe that Kraft would feel comfortable weighing in on a decision like determining when-and-where Maye’s first career start might be.
But according to Mayo, those conversations aren’t happening.
And Mayo’s decision, at the moment, is Brissett at QB1.