During the fourth quarter of an ugly loss to the Chargers on Saturday, many of the few who remained for garbage time of a garbage game made their preferences known regarding the team’s first-year head coach.
“Fire Mayo!” was the chant that emerged.
“You hear those things,” coach Jerod Mayo said after the game, via Mike Reiss of ESPN.com. “But at the same time, they paid to sit in the seats, and we’ve got to play better. If we play better, we don’t have to hear that stuff.”
He’s right, but the problem is the play. And the coach is responsible for it.
Of course, the roster has something to do with it. And the roster that Bill Belichick left for Mayo wasn’t good. In Belichick’s last two years with the Patriots, the greatest coach in football history (as UNC recruits are constantly hearing it) could muster only 12 total wins in 34 total games.
For years, Belichick the coach had to compensate for the failures of Belichick the personnel guru. Once Tom Brady left, it all caught up to Belichick. And the stench of bad personnel decisions lingers.
That doesn’t mean Mayo should be guaranteed a second season. At times this year, it has felt as if Mayo was trying to talk his way out of a job. Like when he called his team “soft.” And it was odd, to say the least, to learn on Saturday that Mayo said running back Rhamondre Stevenson wouldn’t start the game due to ongoing fumbling issues — before Stevenson actually started the game.
Thriving as an NFL coach is proven in big moments. Surviving is shown in little things. Too often this year, Mayo has tripped over those little things. And it raises the question of whether ownership did the wrong thing by creating a contractual succession plan that gave Mayo the job before Bill Belichick was asked to leave it.
Now, the question becomes what will Robert Kraft do? Firing Mayo this quickly could be interpreted as an admission that Mayo never should have been hired. And there’s a chance that Mayo simply needs more time to grow and to develop into the role.
But only dysfunctional teams deal with mistakes by doubling down. The smart teams recognize the error of their ways, and they make changes.
It was never going to be easy to follow Belichick. And if Mayo were to be fired after only one season in Belichick’s long shadow, the next coach will end up lurking in it, too.
On one hand, it’s part of the price to pay for two decades of excellence. On the other hand, a simple question needs to be asked. Can Mayo ever live up to the excellence that Belichick demonstrated? If the projection is that he can’t and won’t, it makes sense to consider a change.
Especially with former Belichick assistant Brian Flores possibly on the brink of becoming a head coach again, if there’s an owner willing to ignore his pending lawsuit against the NFL and four franchises.
