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Bedard: There was second guessing about Mayo over summer and him getting a second year isn't guaranteed

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I think Mayo simply hasn’t been qualified enough for this position. At the minimum, he needed several years of seasoning before he got into a gig like this.

This is entirely on the ownership for making an emotional decision to hire guy they liked as a person. Hopefully the lesson is learned and they realize they need to take their hands off these type of decisions.
 
The lesson to be drawn here, and it is a lesson with broader application than to a football team, is that you do not do anyone a favor when you hire him to do a job he cannot do. The inevitable failure damages the man you hired as much as it damages your enterprise, or your society.
I’m feeling bad for Mayo through all of this. He deserved better.
 


We should probably pump the brakes on him getting shown the door.
 
What specific players should he have signed?
We’ve been through this many times.
Just take a look at the free agent list and compare it to the players we are sending out there.
There were literally dozens of players better than what we have.
Whatever combination of those he signed would be better than having the money sitting in krafts bank account.

Let’s try this a different way. Give me a list of all the players on the 53 man roster than couldn’t have been upgraded in free agency.
 
I think all this negative media and pressure is a good thing. Will make the coaches buckle up and we would know if it's completely a talent issue or coaching issue. For now blame has shifted to coaching.

I expect Covington to work his b&&& off and come up with better game plans and in game adjustments. Expect mayo to be more winvokved in defense while offense stabilizes on its own under AVP and McAdoo and Peters. They seem to be overachieving with the talent that they have. Defense has never been so badm so Mayo and Covington have their hands full on defense .

I am also expecting fewer social media and media distractions after this and mayo to zipper up a lot in his press conversations. I think he has been humbled and will probably think 3 or 4 times before he utters a word.
 
Perry answered questions on Reddit yesterday and said a lot of the same stuff.

 
I wouldn’t hate Mcdaniels, Daboll, to coach Maye.
I would. Outside of Tom Brady, McDaniels has been known to be a problem with QB's. Every team he's attempted to coach he treated a QB like **** and ran him out of town and picked a scrub in his place. And we know it's damn near impossible to derail Brady. All it takes is McDaniels getting a bad opinion of Maye and deciding he needs someone more cerebral who is a Brady clone and then he'll get in Kraft's ear and trash him and ruin his confidence and try to undermine him.

Not interested in that at all. Get a guy like Mike Kafka who is considered the QB whisperer behind Mahomes that has been making his way up the ranks and is highly respected.
 


We should probably pump the brakes on him getting shown the door.

This is just Perry’s opinion. And he’s part of the Mayo fan club going back to the days when Mayo acted like a total goofball on “Quick Slants”.

Riess was on with Bertrand & Zo yesterday. He spoke directly to Kraft about this before the London game and was decidedly lukewarm on Mayo’s prospects. When asked if Mayo was safe for next year he said it was too early to tell & compared it to trying to determine who would win a marathon at mile 6.
 
This is just Perry’s opinion. And he’s part of the Mayo fan club going back to the days when Mayo acted like a total goofball on “Quick Slants”.

Riess was on with Bertrand & Zo yesterday. He spoke directly to Kraft about this before the London game and was decidedly lukewarm on Mayo’s prospects. When asked if Mayo was safe for next year he said it was too early to tell & compared it to trying to determine who would win a marathon at mile 6.
The ultimate thing is that frankly the Patriots were not expected to be good this year. Most reasonable people had that perception going into the season. So yes, fans are being prisoners of the moment because they are upset at seeing what many people knew was coming, but nothing has really been surprising. Especially if you factor injuries on the line and defense into the equation. Does it suck? Yeah. But it is what it is.

Mayo probably would need more PR flops before a chance of him getting canned manifests. 1-6 isn't going to do it, because 1-6 isn't far off from what most people thought.
 
It's so hard to tell on coaches without talent

2 of the top 3 run defenders were Bentley and Barmore with Peppers not far down the list. The best pass rusher last year was Barmore, 49 pressures, 34 hurries, 5 batted balls. He had 8.5 sacks and Wise was next at 4.5. They cannot get to the QB at all without blitzing.

The talent has been drained from last year due to injury and the Peppers thing, but Barmore was the one star level player that made difference making plays in the front 7. For BB to say he had the same guys and were 6th in run defense is an absolute joke, he had 3 of the better run defenders playing.

As to the locker room vibe mentioned, they are losing bad, I'm sure most teams losing bad have a bad vibe in the locker room, that's all overstated IMO.

Greatest coach of all-time had a terrible record last year, Why? Lack of SKILL AND TALENT.

Problem with Mayo is he has no track record and people like to obsess about non-football stuff which is generally overblown. Add to that he likes to be more open than BB ever was and people can't wait to destroy him for whatever he says.

The offense is actually starting to play half decently since they got a QB but are limited by Line and receiver AKA SKILL AND TALENT.
I watched the defensive tape a bit this week, they don't have guys that can fill the Bentley position or the Barmore position so have to play guys where they are not suited. Again: SKILL AND TALENT.

I have no idea if Covington or Mayo are bad coaches or not and agree early returns are not good. I do know first year coaches almost always struggle badly, Texans an outlier. They lack TALENT AND SKILL and until they have some not sure I can definitively judge the coaching.

Look at Kyle Shanahan 2017 and 2018 record. Everyone here would have fired him.
You cannot excuse bad play with injuries in the NFL.
Coaches have to coach up the players they have.

Shanahan was clearly making progress.
What positives can you attach to the job Mayo has done? Where is his impact? What is good? Should a LB who coached LBs not need to use the excuse of I can’t stop the run because I have an injured LB? Shouldn’t coaching come up with a way to stop 18 straight runs?
Shouldn’t he have addressed the problem after the Miami game instead of waiting 3 games to throw his players under the bus?

I would have no issue giving Mayo a break if anyone could show me any positives at all. Any form of improvement. Anything with his stamp on it that is better now than what he inherited.
 
I thought these answers were interesting from Perry's AMA:
Does it feel like there is a leadership void in the locker room now? And if so, how quickly can Drake step up to fill it?

Yes, beingzen. I do. Unavoidable when guys like David Andrews and Ja'Whaun Bentley are out injured. Even those guys have been around the team while hurt.... It ain't the same. Jabrill Peppers, meanwhile, is dealing with his off-field situation away from the team, and prior to that I think a lot of players would've looked to him as one of their top voices in the room. Coaches set the standard, and players like those -- when bought in, and I believe those guys were -- help communicate the message to the rest of the team.

Now with those players out, there are still vets around who want to have their coach's back -- I think Daniel Ekuale, Kendrick Bourne and Kyle Dugger tried to do that after the game in London -- but they don't all carry the same clout as some of their teammates who are out injured. Add it to the list of challenges Mayo faces in Year 1; he's lost some lieutenants. Makes it all the more important that his message is clear and resonates. We'll see if that message makes an impact on the team this week against the Jets. If it doesn't, the number of buttons to push and levers to pull are diminishing...

 
I think Mayo was a bad hire and needs to be fired.

However, this report of second guessing and covert leaks BS is bush league and makes backstabbing Kraft look like a moron.
 
I think all this negative media and pressure is a good thing. Will make the coaches buckle up and we would know if it's completely a talent issue or coaching issue. For now blame has shifted to coaching.

I expect Covington to work his b&&& off and come up with better game plans and in game adjustments. Expect mayo to be more winvokved in defense while offense stabilizes on its own under AVP and McAdoo and Peters. They seem to be overachieving with the talent that they have. Defense has never been so badm so Mayo and Covington have their hands full on defense .

I am also expecting fewer social media and media distractions after this and mayo to zipper up a lot in his press conversations. I think he has been humbled and will probably think 3 or 4 times before he utters a word.
Maybe. The team and coaches are really facing crossroads this week. How they respond to it will determine what happens with this regime. Given the reports yesterday about players still griping and not uniting (like in the “they hate their coach” and reactions to Spygate scandal), early results are not positive.
 
I would. Outside of Tom Brady, McDaniels has been known to be a problem with QB's. Every team he's attempted to coach he treated a QB like **** and ran him out of town and picked a scrub in his place. And we know it's damn near impossible to derail Brady. All it takes is McDaniels getting a bad opinion of Maye and deciding he needs someone more cerebral who is a Brady clone and then he'll get in Kraft's ear and trash him and ruin his confidence and try to undermine him.

Not interested in that at all. Get a guy like Mike Kafka who is considered the QB whisperer behind Mahomes that has been making his way up the ranks and is highly respected.
In McDaniels defense he should have run those QBs out of time because they sucked.
It’s better for a franchise to move on from a highly paid QB you will never win with and hope to hit on the next one than to suck up to that QB and ensure you won’t win.
None of that applies to Drake Maye.
 
It's so hard to tell on coaches without talent

2 of the top 3 run defenders were Bentley and Barmore with Peppers not far down the list. The best pass rusher last year was Barmore, 49 pressures, 34 hurries, 5 batted balls. He had 8.5 sacks and Wise was next at 4.5. They cannot get to the QB at all without blitzing.

The talent has been drained from last year due to injury and the Peppers thing, but Barmore was the one star level player that made difference making plays in the front 7. For BB to say he had the same guys and were 6th in run defense is an absolute joke, he had 3 of the better run defenders playing.

As to the locker room vibe mentioned, they are losing bad, I'm sure most teams losing bad have a bad vibe in the locker room, that's all overstated IMO.

Greatest coach of all-time had a terrible record last year, Why? Lack of SKILL AND TALENT.

Problem with Mayo is he has no track record and people like to obsess about non-football stuff which is generally overblown. Add to that he likes to be more open than BB ever was and people can't wait to destroy him for whatever he says.

The offense is actually starting to play half decently since they got a QB but are limited by Line and receiver AKA SKILL AND TALENT.
I watched the defensive tape a bit this week, they don't have guys that can fill the Bentley position or the Barmore position so have to play guys where they are not suited. Again: SKILL AND TALENT.

I have no idea if Covington or Mayo are bad coaches or not and agree early returns are not good. I do know first year coaches almost always struggle badly, Texans an outlier. They lack TALENT AND SKILL and until they have some not sure I can definitively judge the coaching.

Look at Kyle Shanahan 2017 and 2018 record. Everyone here would have fired him.
That's all true but I am concerned that he's not more savvy with his statements to the media. Less worried about the x's & o's and more about the confusion he sows. Almost everything he says is either not worded well, too much information, invites contradiction, etc. And he had years to learn how to do this well. The recent "soft" comment, the comments about Maye late in training camp, etc., were just very ill-advised and unclear as to their purpose. Coaches who are good at this say things that make sense to everyone even if they're not that informative, not things that invite more questions.
 
I’m feeling bad for Mayo through all of this. He deserved better.
I do as well. He would have been wiser to have declined the offer, though I understand that would have been difficult, or he should at least have insisted at least on being designated DC and given that job in full measure as some sort of training for sports management job. I understand, of course, that Bill would have been and to a degree was obstructionist re all of this and that he did not as he promised involve Mayo early in his HC work. Would that the Krafts had had the backbone to insist as a condition of Bill's continued employment that he help to build Mayo's HC-related skills. The bottom line is that Mayo is not up to the job, that he ought to have realized this, that the Krafts ought to have realized this, however besotted the elder Krafts was with him, and that if the Kraft swere - foolishly, I would say - insistent on giving Mayo the job five years early, they ought have seen his being readied for the job in part by insisting that Bill - their goddam employee after all - either play a role in coaching Mayo up or tender his resignation. The whole thing is a clusterf---k, as any objective observer will attest. The sooner the failure this is acknowledged, the sooner it can be addressed.
 
AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW
This team will be much more attractive to free agents and coaches this coming off-season compared to last.
1) We have a QB who looks fine.
2) There won't be the huge increase in cap money.
3) We will have $140M in cap money available. Coaches and free agents will know that there will be several major additions in free agency and through trade.
4) The OFFENSE will secure a top WR. The rest of the focus will be on the OL over the next two years.
5) We will be able to afford several top additions on DEFENSE. There will be plenty of cap money, including an extra $30M not spent this year. That $30M might buy a player or two or three.
6) Kraft gave Mayo a shot, after speaking to lots of folks. He knew who was really available and what kind of control that coach would want. Mayo is an interim coach. Sure, he might have succeeded and stayed.

NOTES
A) There will not be questions on who is in charge. Kraft won't hire a coach who also needs to be GM or to control the GM. Kraft can choose to have both the GM and HC report directly to Jonathan, or the HC can report to Wolf. In any case, that will be known when choosing the coach.
B) My guess is that the HC will report to Wolf, and that, obviously, Wolf and the Kraft's will agree on that coach. Isn't that what we wanted for Belichick, for him to be the HC and to split off all GM responsibilities? In the end, this was unacceptable to Bill.

BOTTOM LINE
Believe it or not, the team will be a top choice for coaches in the next off-season, with the $140M of cap money, our injured coming back on Defense, and with a QB ready to go, after getting the rest of the season to develop.

But, yes, it is sad to see how badly Mayo has done. AVP and McAdoo have/had control of the Offense. Mayo needed to help Covington run the Defense. In addition, Mayo needed to be strong spokesman for the team, with the ONE major responsibility of keeping a weak team on track as it looked forward to the next off-season. Mayo needed to maintain discipline. He simply failed.
 
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