The New England Patriots made some huge changes this offseason, including moving on from head coach Bill Belichick after 24 seasons and replacing him with Jerod Mayo.
Through five weeks, New England is 1-4 and has lost their last four games, so it's not surprising that there has been talk about disappointed players in the locker room.
However, on an Instagram Live with Golden State Warrior forward Draymond Green and FOX NFL insider Jordan Schultz on Thursday, Patriots defensive end Keion White shared how he and his teammates viewed their new head coach and compared him to their old coach.
“Mayo is in like a different position. He was drafted by the Patriots, played for the Patriots his whole career, and then coached under Bill. And so obviously you have a lot of influences from Bill," White said. "But the one thing I really applaud him on and give him flowers for is maintaining who he is.
He’s like a kind of quirky, personable guy. Obviously, Bill’s not. Bill’s funny in his own ways. Like, you’d catch a joke out of him every once in a while. But, that’s not really who Mayo is. And so I really applaud him for sticking to who he is and being a personable guy that’ll just come in the locker room and just have a conversation about anything… he’ll just have a conversation in the middle of our locker room.
Obviously, you get into the record and everything like that — it doesn’t reflect (us). But, I know for a fact everybody in that locker room would still run through a brick wall for him.”
Mayo clearly still has the respect and admiration of his players, but that could start to falter in the future if they don't start winning. It's probably one of the reasons that New England made the switch to Drake Maye as their starting quarterback this week.
If Mayo can keep his players bought in, he can avoid some real organizational problems that plague bad franchises.
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