Mayo concedes it's been a tough week

[The_Riddler]

I think it's the "quality of tackles" I suppose. I'm in the middle of law school finals right now so I don't have time to dive deep into stats, but how many tackles are for a loss? Tackles as a useful stat doesn't really do it for me anymore. Hell, if I remember correctly, towards the tail end of his career, Bruschi was racking up tons of tackles. They were all just 6, 7, 8 yards downfield.

That's exactly the issue, there are no impact plays, just "pad the tackle-total" stats after 4-8 yard gains. I expect more than that from the 10th overall selection in the draft in his second season.

 

[Sicilian]

He has 1 tackle for a loss which was in the first Miami game. He had 12 tackles this past week. Some were after the reciever had caught the ball but a good amount were after just 2-3 yd gains by the RB. the only real bad play I saw was when he whiffed on an easy tackle on 3rd and 5 early in the game, but Meriweather picked Henne off later on the drive so it worked out.

I may be wrong, but don't ILB get fewer tackles for a loss anyway? If they're making a run tackle, that generally means the RB was coming straight up the gut (hard to stop him before the line there unless you're completely selling out on run), or bouncing to the outside, where the OLB's are usually the first to meet him. If they miss, RB is probably AT LEAST getting to the LOS before Mayo can get there as the second line of defense.

OLB's get more for a loss because they have the opportunity to shoot gaps on sweeps, tosses, and end-arounds.