Giardi: State of Mayo - a losing streak, mixed messaging and loyalists with questions

If you're coming into this space today hoping to feel better about your football team, I'm sorry. No can do. 

The Patriots are like one of those 72-car pileups you see in Montana during the winter. One car loses control, then the next, and before you know it, the whole damn highway is twisted steel, moose bits splattered all over the road, and a fleet of first responders trying to figure out who's hurt, who's okay, and how the hell they clean up this mess. You see, this Pats season is devolving rapidly, and if it continues, people will lose jobs, and it might go beyond the requisite fall guy or two.

Plenty of players warrant being under the microscope, but here's what stuck in my craw this morning. The messaging has been a borderline disaster. That's all on Jerod Mayo. And look, I can be a forgiving guy. I understood there'd be growing pains when you tab an inexperienced coach to be the next guy after Bill Belichick. Mayo himself references that once a week, and that's fine. There's a lot he didn't know that he didn't know until ascending to this position. But he, like his team, is an error-repeater, which is concerning.

This week, the issue is Mayo calling his team a dirty word (in football parlance) shortly after Sunday's 32-16 loss to the Jaguars in London.

"Look, we're a soft football team across the board," he said.

Excuse me? That's crazy talk, at least publicly. If Mayo wants to rip his guys behind the scenes, have at it. He's not wrong. I've made that point for weeks, as has Bedard (he wrote a terrific column Sunday). But putting that out there for the world to see opens the door wide open, including from one of his former teammates and someone he tried to get on this coaching staff, Devin McCourty. Speaking on 'Football Night in America', the former Pats safety was as blunt as a hammer.

"The first thing I think of is toughness isn't a skillset," he said. "You don't need to be fast or do anything special to be tough. The second part of this is: why Jerod? Why is this team not tough? When you hear a team isn't tough and that they're soft, you think, 'What is the head coach doing? What is he doing to get them ready to go?' Mayo and his staff have a lot of questions to answer going into next week."

Is Mayo doing enough?

"I think I am," he said to WEEI's 'The Greg Hill Show' in response to McCourty's comments. "In saying that, look, obviously, our record does not reflect that. We are where our record says we are. We're a 1-6 football team right now."

Did you ever think that by the third week of October, Mayo loyalists would be asking questions like that, necessitating answers? Sorry, but I didn't have that on my bingo card. 

UPDATE ... and now we have this from Bill Belichick, which is not going to help Mayo with his players:

But what was as striking - and I'm about to get to it - was Mayo's having to resort to an all-too-familiar theme during his tenure — walking back something he said. There are so many examples this season, I'm sure I'm leaving some out, but we've had the "burn some cash" comment, saying he was okay with Matthew Judon expressing himself, then later saying he would have liked his issues to remain in-house, remarking that the offensive line's issues had nothing to do with deciding Drake Maye's timeline, then contradicting that after Maye finally started. Now, Mayo is slapping the bus in reverse and trying to undo what can't be undone, the "soft" statement.

"Playing soft," he interrupted on WEEI. "I should have said - and look, let me just go ahead and correct that: we're playing soft. Because if you look at the first - going back to training camp - there was definitely some toughness all around the place. And we still have the same players. We just got to play that way...

"And like I said, to correct what I said, it's not that we have a soft football team. We are just playing soft over the past few weeks."

As he did right after the game, Mayo on Monday reiterated that toughness is defined by stopping the run, being able to run, and covering kicks. About that, Jerod. Here's the ground game splits from the last five weeks:

Week 3: Jets 133 yards (4.0 avg). Pats 78 yards (5.2)

Week 4: 49ers 148 yards (4.6). Pats 73 yards (3.0)

Week 5: Dolphins 193 yards (4.7). Pats 151 (7.9)

Week 6: Texans 192 yards (6.9). Pats 82 yards (3.2)

Week 7: Jaguars 171 yards (4.4). Pats 38 yards (2.5)

Throw in yesterday's 96-yard kick return, and I've seen more formidable teams toughness-wise in flag football. Given the consistency with which this is happening, it is more than fair to wonder if the coaching is getting through to the players or if it's falling on deaf ears. You had two more players - Ja'Lynn Polk and K.J. Osborn - take their frustrations to social media, and even if the true meaning of Polk's post is hard to decipher (and since deleted), that Mayo is having to answer questions of this nature is a symptom of a more significant problem.

"I'm not going to try to control their lives or anything like that," said Mayo of those posts. "Those guys know, if you put something out there, you're responsible for it. And it's out there. It's out there forever.

"What I will say is, I hope the team - us sitting here at one and six - they see me. I'm doing all these interviews. It's who I am, it's what I do, and being able to deal with adversity. I mean, it's hard to lead, you know, at one and six, it's easy at six and one, and for me, like it's in my fabric, it's in my DNA to keep pushing forward. And I think the guys hopefully see this."

They see and hear everything, which may be part of an issue that grows with every week and every loss. Mayo may be the one with his hands on the steering wall, but it feels increasingly like he doesn't know how to drive the car.