Mike Reiss: Fair to Say This Was Jerod Mayo’s Worst Week as Patriots Head Coach
On Tuesday’s edition of Zolak and Bertrand, Mike Reiss who covers the Patriots for ESPN, joined the show. While recapping the Patriots 15-10 loss at the hands of the Miami Dolphins, Reiss agreed with the sentiment that the result of the game indicated that it was Jerod Mayo’s worst week as the Head Coach of the Patriots.
“But How You Manage The Game, Like That’s Your Job…”
Bertrand: So let’s start with some of the stuff from the game on Sunday, and I know that the passes from the 13 yard line with just over a minute to go at the end of that second quarter is something that is obviously worthy of second guessing. We just had a caller who put a lot of the blame on Jerod Mayo for that situation, not because of anything he did or didn’t do in the game.
Mike Reiss: Yeah.
Bertrand: But saying that Jerod right after Game one in Cincinnati, calling the offense unsustainable in terms of how much they ran in that game. That was the reason why they were throwing in that situation in the game on Sunday. I would say if there’s blame, and I think you feel the same way. If there’s blame on Jerod, it’s that he wasn’t telling Alex Van Pelt in that situation to be more aware of the clock in the game, and to not just be throwing passes.
Mike Reiss: That’s the way I feel.
Bertrand: I’m with you on this.
Mike Reiss: To me, the offensive coordinator can’t be throwing passes there, but it’s the head coach’s job to ultimately make sure that doesn’t happen. So I go back to it, and I’ve heard this on that like a do your job back in the day, Bill (Belichick) would be there with Josh (McDaniels) and you’d hear Bill say, “Hey, run it up in there twice.”. It’s just the management of the game, right?
Bertrand: Yeah. That’s what a good head coach does.
Mike Reiss: That is missing right now, and that this week in the second quarter really stood out to me. The same thing happen in week two and it was this one was even worse.
Zolak: The overpowering thing is Jerod has given him pretty much full control of the offense. Going back to the comments of, “Hey, you’re the head coach of the offense, go ask him.”
Bertrand: But that’s his fault, right?
Zolak: Yeah, it’s now like he’s overpowered him too much.
Mike Reiss: He did take that back, at least walked it back that to a point. It’s got to be hard to be a head coach. Let’s start with that. You got your offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator, and special teams. You got Evan Rothstein upstairs. But how you manage the game, like that’s your job, right? In that situation, like Jerod does need to be communicating with Alex Van Pelt on that. So I sort of put it on both of them. But more disappointed in Alex Van Pelt in that situation because we had seen the same thing happen three weeks prior.
Bertrand: Was this Jerod Mayo’s worse week as head coach of this team?
Mike Reiss: That’s fair. That’s fair to say.