Call it the Jerod Mayo Corollary to the Bill Parcells Doctrine.
Parcells, the Hall of Fame coach, famously said “You are what your record says you are.” Mayo, in his first year leading the Patriots, added to it, pointing out that his team wasn’t good enough in Sunday’s loss to Arizona and at 3-11 hasn’t been very good all year.
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“I sound like a broken record standing up here. We’ve got to do better. You look at the stats. We were O-for (0-for-6) on third down and they were probably 70 percent (10-for-15, 67%) on third down,” Mayo said. “You talk about extending plays and defensively not showing up in the red area. They were 3-for-4 in the red area. We’re spent a lot of time on it. It’s definitely an important part of the field and we just didn’t do it well enough. Turnovers. There were a couple of balls on the ground and they got one.”
He then delivered the money line:
“At the end of the day, we are what we put on film,” he said and then quoted Parcells. “We are what our record is.”
Agitated by repeat mistakes, Mayo talked about what the Patriots needed to do to improve from 3-11 and better than they looked on film.
“I told the guys in there that we all have to take accountability and what does that look like,” Mayo said. “Accountability isn’t just (saying) ‘My bad’ or saying “If we just would have done ‘X, Y, and Z.’ We’ve been talking about that all year. Accountability is going out and correcting it. That’s about action. It’s not about (players) saying ‘It’s my fault. It’s my fault’.”
The Patriots were flagged four times for 45 yards and were tackled behind the line of scrimmage six times on Sunday.
“It’s very frustrating,” Mayo said. “We’re not a good enough football team to be able to go backwards and overcome those long-yardage situations as we’ve seen all season.”
At 3-11, the Patriots are tied with five other teams for the third-worst record in the NFL. The Giants are 2-12 and the Raiders, who play Atlanta on Monday Night Football are 2-11.
