Stop me if you've heard this - or a variation of this - from Jerod Mayo before.
"It came down to two things, and that's really just the turnovers and the run defense," the Patriots head coach told us this morning after watching the tape of their 24-21 loss to the Bills.
We're 15 games into the season, and this team's issues have shown no signs of dissipating. If it's not the turnovers, it's being gashed by opposing runners. If it's not opposing runners, it's the pass defense. If it's not the pass defense, it's the tackling, the offensive line, the drops. On and on it goes. You get the point. Try to stop one leak and another springs. That's where the 2024-25 Patriots are. That's who they are. The two remaining games aren't going to change that, although, for an ownership group that wants to stay the course with Mayo, a close defeat against the division-winning Bills is likely all the ammunition they need to proceed with their plans to run it back with their head coach. Yes, it sure feels like year two of Mayo is loading.
"Look, I try to stay as present as possible, but the reality is that you always have to look out the front window when you're trying to build a team," Mayo told 'The Greg Hill Show' on WEEI shortly after meeting virtually with reporters. "For me, after we get through the season, there are a lot of things, a lot of checklists that you have to go through, you know, what players you want to keep around, what coaches you want to keep around here, how the process of the season - what I did right, what I did wrong.
"I have to put a mirror in front of my face. It starts with me putting a mirror in front of my face and really just going through the things that I have to get better at going forward and looking at everything that we've done this year from a process standpoint. I mean, some of it's been good, some of it's been bad, but that is part of being in your first year. Whether (it's) your first year in whatever - first year you want to be a journalist - the first year is a learning experience, but the most important thing is to be able to reflect and be honest with yourself. When you didn't do things the right way..."*
Mayo and his staff, some of whom clearly won't be back next year, put together one of their better plans for the season against Sean McDermott's beast of the East. They "mush rushed" the hell out of Josh Allen, utilizing mainly four defenders to keep him from running roughshod over their defense as he has often done dating back to 2020. But without Stefon Diggs on the outside, the Pats were able to**premium*** man up the Bills' underwhelming collection of receivers. They played man nearly 65% of the time, plastering Khalil Shakir, Amari Cooper, and Keon Coleman short, intermediate, and deep, and won a majority of those matchups. A team that had scored 30 or more points in eight straight games was held to 24, and Allen threw for just 154 yards and was intercepted for the first time in weeks.
But that good work against the pass exposed the run defense like a pale-skinned teenager poolside without a hat or sunscreen. The defensive line got pushed around, the linebackers lacked the physicality to redirect or move bigger offensive linemen, and the third level took so many bad angles that you wonder if any of them passed their Trigonometry classes. That's par for the course.
In 11 of the team's last 13 games, the Pats have surrendered 100 or more rushing yards, and over the previous three outings, the totals were 144, 163, and 176 yesterday. James Cook, who is good, looked like Eric Dickerson in his prime, with time to find the hole and then gliding through with minimal contact. It was embarrassing. It's been embarrassing. And yet, it keeps happening.
When I asked this morning, Mayo summarized it as "a lack of consistency." That's it — four words. He's definitely been cramming the Bill Belichick Art of a Press Conference manual after last weekend's mess. Thankfully, I can give you more.
Personnel is a prominent issue, and not having Ja'Whaun Bentley and being without Christian Barmore again is harmful, but it shouldn't be to this level. Despite often saying he's not making excuses, Mayo has already laid the groundwork for this rationale and has undoubtedly communicated that to the Krafts. Give me better players, and we'll cook (or something like that). Maybe he's right, but the alarming lack of improvement anywhere except at quarterback reflects the work done by GM Eliot Wolf to build this roster and Mayo's (and co) inability to coach it up.
But with players publicly and privately proclaiming their support for Mayo and the Kraft media cartel pointing fingers at Alex Van Pelt (yes, I know Greg did, too, but he's a sourced, independent thinker like me), yesterday's moral victory feels like it's the final nail in the "Mayo must go" chorus, at least for this year.
"I appreciate it," Mayo said of his defense by Drake Maye and others. "And I've said this before: this game is all about relationships, and again, as we continue to build, we're going to do it together. You think about it, even with the quarterback, like we're growing up together. This is his rookie year, and I fully anticipate us getting better as a team going forward."