The Patriots are to blame for the 1:6 record, not Jerod Mayo

Mayo obviously deserves his share of criticism as the 1-6 Patriots prepare for Sunday's game against the Jets. You can certainly ask yourself whether he is overwhelmed at work.

His Patriots have lost six straight and are currently ranked No. 1 in the draft. Four of the losses were not close. Their games are full of poor play and mental mistakes. And since being hired in January, Mayo has made regrettable comments about having to back down, from saying the Patriots would “burn some money” in free agency to bungling his announcement as the starting quarterback in August about his “soft” noticed that he went back a bit on Monday.

“Right now we’re playing soft,” Mayo clarified. “When I say that, do I think we have the people there who can turn this ship around? One hundred percent.”

But as the season quickly passes and Mayo hears calls for his sacking, it's important to keep two things in mind.

First, many good coaches had a bad start to their careers. Bill Walsh started 2-14 and 5-22 with the 49ers. Belichick took on an 8-8 Patriots team and went 5-11 in his first year. Dan Campbell started 0-10-1 and 4-19-1 with the Lions and two years later he had the best team in the NFL. Mayo deserves a little leeway from fans and media willing to declare him a failure.

Second, the more Mayo seems overwhelmed and the worse the Patriots play, the less it is his fault.

The people to point the finger at would be bosses Robert and Jonathan Kraft, who hired Mayo despite his poor resume.

Mayo is still a puppy in the coaching world, with only five years of experience, none as a coordinator, before being hired for the big job. He learns pretty much everything about the job on the fly. The Patriots needed executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf, who used his connections to hire a coaching staff since Mayo didn't have one.

And with each clumsy defeat, the Krafts' decision to hire Mayo seems more and more arrogant or naive.

After the Patriots fired Belichick (in Kraft's recent words) in January, there was no search process. No formal interviews with candidates inside or outside the building. Mike Vrabel, the former Patriot and 2021 NFL Coach of the Year, was an obvious choice. That was also true for longtime Patriots assistant Brian Flores, who went 19-14 in his final two years as the Dolphins' head coach.

But the Krafts left out established candidates and essentially handed Mayo the keys to the Porsche the day he passed his driver's test.

The reason? Robert Kraft decided Mayo would be a great head coach because Mayo went on a Kraft-sponsored trip to Israel in 2019.

The Krafts also liked that Mayo was young and a former player, that he had a brief career in finance after playing, and that he was a more affable person than Belichick. But Kraft has repeated the Israel trip statement several times this year.

“I’ve learned over the course of my career to trust my instincts,” Kraft said in January. “The week we spent together in the Holy Land in 2019 really helped strengthen my belief in how special Jerod is as a person and how capable I believe he would be as a head coach in this league.”

With all due respect… what?

What could Mayo possibly have done, shown or said on that trip that would have had any bearing on winning Sunday football games?

If this was truly the reason Kraft hired Mayo, Patriots fans should be concerned because the ownership doesn't understand the criteria for hiring a good football coach.

But it's also possible that the Israel trip was simply the best story Kraft could come up with. What remains unsaid is the financial aspect of Mayo's hiring.

Kraft first had to buy out Belichick, which reportedly cost around $25 million. And according to Pro Football Talk, Mayo also would have received a multimillion-dollar buyout — with no compensation — if he hadn't gotten the head coaching job. It is not known how much the acquisition was worth, but it was rumored to be between $5 million and $10 million.

And Then Additionally, the Krafts would have had to hire Vrabel or Flores (or any other coach) for $10 million to $15 million.

Therefore, it seems plausible that the Krafts hired Mayo not because it was the best move for the football team, but because it was the easiest and most cost-effective option. And they like mayo, so it was worth a try.

The season is now going exactly as you would expect from an inexperienced coach with an inexperienced staff. Mistakes are the order of the day, the team seems lost and Mayo keeps making self-inflicted mistakes.

Fans, media, and Belichick were all too eager to get in on Mayo. But as losses pile up and Mayo appears overwhelmed, the blame should instead lie with the owners.

Ben Volin can be reached at [email protected].