Here’s what Jerod Mayo had to say during his postgame press conference following the New England Patriots’ loss on Sunday to the Arizona Cardinals.
OPENING STATEMENT:
(Broadcast was cut to – and portions were omitted. Here’s the part that was available to be transcribed:)
…after a performance like that. We’ve got to do better. You look at the stats, they had 389 yards. We had 311. The running game, once again, we give up a big run play that really hurts us and really skews the rest of the stats. I would say on third down, just in general, we were 0-for on third down, and they were probably around 70% on third down. When you talk about extending plays, I mean, that’s what it is.”
“Then really defensively, not showing up in the red area. Those guys were three for four in the red area. Look, we spent a lot of time on it. It’s definitely an important part of the field, and we just didn’t do it well enough.”
“Again, turnovers. Turnovers, there are a couple of balls on the ground. They got one. But again, it’s what we put on film. At the end of the day, we are what we put on film. We are what our record is.”
“Penalities, we’ll kind of get into that. Again, it kind of sets us back on some of these drives where we’re really making headway during the series. I will say, look, today we won the coin toss. I thought the best thing to do for us was to put the offense out there. I thought it was an opportunity for us to go out there and start fast, which it was. Unfortunately, we walked away with no points on the missed field goal, but that was my thinking on that.”
“I told the guys in there, the same thing I’m telling you, is we all got to take accountability, and what does that look like? Accountability is not really the ‘My bad.’ The accountability isn’t coming in saying things like, ‘Oh, if we would have just did X, Y, and Z.’ We’ve been talking about that all year. Accountability is going out and correcting it, and that’s about action. It’s not about just sitting here saying, ‘That’s my fault, my fault.’ You have enough of those, and that’s what you have out there on the field today.”
“Fire away.”
On coming off the bye and the first offensive series, they move with the ball, but get the holding penalty, and the second when after getting the sack, how frustrating it is to see the same mistakes over and over?
“It’s very frustrating. We’re not a good enough football team to be able to go backwards and overcome those long-yardage situations as we’ve seen all season.”
On if there were any thoughts on going for it on 4th-and-6 on that first drive?
“Yeah, there were definitely thoughts on going for it on fourth down. We elected not to.”
On what the explanation was on the hit on Kyler Murray where it looked like he became a runner:
“Yeah, they just told me that even though he is a runner, they still have some of that protection as far as hits to the head. So they said, ‘Jennings hit him in the head,’ and they called it. Got to live with it.”
On the fact it seemed like the offensive game plan was a little conservative and if that was part of the game plan, or the result of some struggles:
“No, not at all. I thought we were able to run the ball. I told these guys going into the game, ‘We got to be able to run the ball for four quarters.’ But at the same time, we got to get open, we got to catch the ball, we got to make the throws, we got to block the guys up front, and we got to run the ball. Those are fundamental things. And this is why I always go back to the X’s and O’s are one thing, and we’re all pretty competent as far as Xs and O’s are concerned. But going out there and executing a play, it takes a lot, and we just weren’t able to do that on a consistent basis.”
On what he saw on the short yardage – two players that couldn’t get the yard, half yardage and if he had a conversation with Alex [Van Pelt] around fourth down?
“I mean, it was disappointing. I said this, I think probably the first week of the season, there comes a point in time as a football team where everyone in the stadium knows what the play is, and we just got to move bodies, and we weren’t able to do that.”
On if he feels like they’ve shown they can be that team?
“We have some guys. We have guys in there that are physically tough, mentally tough. My expectation for them is that we always can move bodies. Unfortunately, we didn’t do that today.”
On if he would consider running Drake in that situation, being that it’s a short-yard situation?
“You said it, I didn’t.”
On the fact they talked about their running game, but then gave up 163 and what it is he’s seeing with the lack of run defense with his team:
“The big run was the big run. We had people there to make the play. I don’t know if you guys saw it that way. We had guys there to make the tackle, we just didn’t come up with it. This is why I continue to go back to this game is about fundamentals and tackling being a major one there.”
On the fact he said, “You said it, I didn’t.” and if it was Alex Van Pelt’s decision not to run it down on the goal line:
“It’s always my decision. I would say, look, the quarterback obviously has a good pair of legs and does a good job running the ball. We just chose not to do it there.”
On why he believes the offensive line played the way it did early:
“I got to watch the film. I would say, just from on the sideline and seeing the clips on the Jumbotron. We had a hard time, especially inside. The one sack on, I think it was on Lowe, the defensive man got a good jump on that and ran the hump. So I thought inside, just from once again not watching the film, I thought inside, we definitely let some leakage come through.”
On the fact defensively, Christian Gonzalez had a good game, but otherwise, there were a lot of problems:
“Again, just not good enough. Thanks.”
The above is also subject to typographical errors. Any issues or questions, please let me know in the comments below.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
Jerod Mayo is the equivalent of the motivational poster you saw when you went to the guidance counselor’s office in elementary school.