Which means it’s time to examine partial remains.
May I have a glass of water, c’mon?
This 4-13 was a systemic failure at every level of the organization.
That will bring back the tourists.
And put this business on a payin' basis.
(Pardon the mixed Hooper and Quint references, but I’d painted myself into rhetorical corner.)
Anyway, enough of the preliminaries.
Or because I think they’re not among the best owners in all of sports.
By all accounts of everyone I’ve ever met who knows Mayo personally, he’s an impressive guy.
Clearly knowledgeable about the game.
And which had teams requesting interviews over a year ago.
(attempt to imagine for one hot second John Henry doing the same under any circumstances.)
Mayo
I’ll continue to be Blogger Obvious and stick with Mayo.
But those are correctable.
The kinds of decisions you get better at with experience.
Where he was clearly in over is head was on much bigger issues.
The sort of thing that are not an easy fix.
The Cincinnati win in Week 1 qualifies.
As does the Indy game, when they scored on their first four possessions.
And both Buffalo games.
Unfortunately, since the last one cost them a cargo ship filled with draft value.
Calling his team “soft” was one, but at least they won the next game.
“In the spring.”
“Felt like he - they - were making it up as they went along.
It was amazing how one day it would be this and then the next, something completely different.”
Because I never believed we had an edge (in coaching)."
Offensive Line
Where do we count the ways?
I suppose we can say this without really casting blame on the O-linemen themselves.
Eliot Wolf (more on him) signed these guys.
Mayo put them out there week after week.
And Scott Peters coached them up.
And yet it was never really addressed.
They pulled him after 12 snaps, which is 11 more blocking snaps than Joe Milton III had.
And he never played another down of NFL football.
Jacobs was signed from Denver, having never seen the field for them.
After 12 snaps in his first game, he started at LT in his second.
And was put on an island against Joey Bosa.
If only anyone could’ve seen this problem coming.
Their blitz rate of 25.4% was 13th in the league.
Fat lot of good it did.
Who’d have figured?
And simply put, it got worse as it went along.
Four times they allowed 40-plus points.
Six times an opponent scored the most points they had on the season.
You use those adjectives when you’re describing a good defense, which we went into this year expecting.
Counting on, actually.
But it regressed in every statistical area.
Wide receiver
Eliot Wolf did not, in fact, neglect this position.
In fact, he invested heavily in it in terms of draft capital.
Unfortunately:
Here are the totals on Wolf’s entire wide receiver room:
Patriots:Receptions: 161.
Touchdowns: 10
Ja’Marr Chase:Receptions: 127.
Touchdowns: 2
Ladd McConkey:Receptions: 82.
And desperately wanted to avoid.4-13 Part 2: Foxboro Drift.
Time of Death: January 5th, 2025 at 4pm.
Cause of Death: Every other thing that happened in the past 12 months.
