A tradition like no other: Jerod Mayo has walked back his latest foot-in-mouth comment
The Monday routine is set like clockwork at this point. Get out of bed, have a nice stretch, eat a balanced breakfast, freshen up, get dressed, commute to work, catch up on the news, write up Jerod Mayo walking back his latest gaffe.
The New England Patriots head coach has done it again. He’s got it down to a fine art form. Finding creative new ways to shirk accountability for another embarrassing Sunday. This time, Mayo absorbed the reporter’s question like a ball of energy and redirected it at his offensive coordinator, Alex Van Pelt.
Asking Mayo whether he considered using quarterback Drake Maye to run the ball on a critical fourth-and-1 play in the second half, the reporter specifically said, “It’s a short-yardage situation and [Maye] can run.” Mayo responded with, “You said it, I didn’t.”
MORE: 6 takeaways as the Patriots get blown out coming off of the bye week
For the sake of context, a follow-up question asked whether it was Van Pelt’s decision to run Rhamondre Stevenson, who got stuffed for no gain, instead of Maye. Mayo answered that with “It’s always my decision. The quarterback obviously has a good pair of legs and does a good job running the ball. We just decided not to do it there.”
But that was not nearly enough to stop onlookers from zeroing in on “You said it, I didn’t.” And, so, Mayo once again had to go back and explain himself the following morning in his weekly video conference. Because, of course, Mayo heard the noise and can’t help but address it. And no one should have sympathy for him to have to do that, because he created the noise in the first place.
“I know there’s a lot of chatter about the question last night of, ‘You said that.’ I didn’t mean anything by that,” Mayo said. “It was more of a defensive response. Ultimately, and I tried to clarify that with the follow-up question, all of those decisions are mine. I just wanted to get that out there.”
In CLASSIC Mayo fashion, he then had to answer for the answer. What did he mean by “defensive response?”
“Yeah, it was just more of I didn’t mean anything by it. I just was like, ‘you said it’ because I didn’t want to go down that whole rabbit hole trying to explain all those things,” Mayo said. “Like I just said, I tried to clarify that with the follow-up question saying that all of those critical situations fall on me.”
Finally, Mayo was asked specifically that, when that play came up, he had the power to tell Van Pelt to run the ball with Maye. Mayo responded, “100% on me.”
New petition: let’s replace the classic Hagrid meme with Mayo.
This would be a great weekly bit if Mayo were doing a better job coaching the Patriots. Considering how bad the league has been in general in the 2024 season, the Pats could have been a respectable team had they simply gotten better coaching, better preparation. But Mayo and his staff can’t figure out what to do on Sundays for the life of them, and combine that with one of the league’s worst rosters, and you have a 3-11 team, that could possibly end up 3-14
These constant foot-in-mouth moments aren’t a big deal in and of themselves. But they do reflect a head coach who simply wasn’t ready for this job and all the responsibilities that come with it. We’ve seen enough from the 2024 Patriots that their head coach is drowning. To the point that we’re wondering if he’ll even last into a second season.
If he does, these press conferences will have to tighten up, if he doesn’t want to keep walking comments back every Monday morning. But if he doesn’t care, fine, no skin off our asses. We’ll happily take the content.
What we can’t take is a football team that’s as bad as this one. So that’s what Mayo is going to have to turn around in a hurry. We said it, not him.
Matt Dolloff is a writer and digital content producer for 98.5 The Sports Hub. Read all of his articles here.
