Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo’s harsh assessment of the team as soft after last Sunday’s loss to the Jaguars has drawn a lot of attention in recent days.
Mayo’s predecessor Bill Belichick took issue with that characterization of a team he helped build and suggested that they will not go over well in the team’s locker room, but one member of that locker room had a different view. Cornerback Jonathan Jones made an appearance on WEEI this week and said that he always takes the opinions of the team’s coaches to heart.
Jones also noted that the opposite of a soft team is a tough team and said that he didn’t think the team has any cause to think of themselves in those terms.
“I don’t think we have any space to call ourselves a tough team based off our last performance,” Jones said. “We weren’t able to stop the run, we weren’t able to run the ball, and we weren’t able to cover kicks.”
Jones’s view may not be shared by everyone in the Patriots locker room, but any attempt to explain why the Patriots are 1-6 this season and 13-28 since the start of the 2022 season leads to the same conclusion that there needs to be upgrades on every facet of the roster in New England.
