Jerod Mayo gives befuddling series of updates on Patriots quarterback situation
For the second straight preseason game, rookie No. 3 pick Drake Maye was easily superior to veteran Jacoby Brissett. But if a series of postgame comments by head coach Jerod Mayo are any indication, Maye remains second in line in the so-called “competition.”
Maye has outperformed Brissett over the last two preseason games for the New England Patriots, and in some respects has done that in practice as well. Mayo himself is admitting as much – but at the same time is keeping Maye firmly in the backup spot. But it’s also a competition. Which Brissett continues to win, by … existing, apparently.
But what if Brissett is unavailable for Week 1 after suffering an apparent shoulder injury during the game? Would Maye start Week 1?
“I would like to say 100 percent. He’s our second-best quarterback on the roster right now,” Mayo said of Maye.
When pressed if that was a “yes,”, Mayo hit ’em with a “Next question.”
“I’m not sure until I watch the film,” Mayo added.
Mayo also said Brissett would have been able to continue playing had the game been in the regular season, but he will have an MRI on Monday. Bottom line, at this point – at every point throughout the summer, really – is that Brissett is the Patriots’ starting quarterback to begin the season.
No big deal, there. Maye is the future of the franchise, a green 21-year-old who, despite his wunderkind physical talents, isn’t worth rushing onto the field before he or the team around him is actually ready to protect him, compete, and produce. We’re talking about a month or two versus the next 10-15 years. Patience is a virtue.
But the way Mayo continues to dance around the topic, to contradict himself, to obfuscate the reality of the team’s actions, it only breeds more impatience. It creates controversy that wasn’t really there in the first place. If this is really a “competition” and Maye has “outplayed” Brissett recently, as Mayo himself said Monday morning, why has Maye barely made any forward progress in closing the gap between himself and the incumbent?
Because it’s not really a competition. Unless you go by Mayo’s comment Monday morning that Brissett’s “body of work” and “overall experience” play into it. Well, it’s going to be pretty hard for Maye to overtake Brissett if he needs to simply have more experience than him, isn’t it?
The mistake isn’t necessarily the way Mayo and the Patriots coaching staff is handling Maye or the quarterback situation heading into the regular season. It’s more that they won’t be more transparent about it, which in turn is making their own jobs a little harder when it comes to dealing with restless media and fans. It’s almost the same problem Bill Belichick ran into at times, with the lack of information he’d provide in his pressers, but with the opposite approach.
MORE: 6 takeaways from the Patriots’ preseason finale
All this is doing is leaving observers more confused. Where everything would be simpler and easier if they came out and said, in their own way, that Brissett is starting and that’s that, and Maye will develop behind the scenes until they determine he’s ready. That’s what their actions tell us.
It’s not worth going by their words, because there’s a whole lot of them, and they make less sense by the day.
Matt Dolloff is a writer and digital content producer for 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read all of his articles here.