Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo defended his team’s performance by using a hypothetical situation for at least the third time this season on Monday morning.
The Patriots led the Colts 24-17 before allowing a 19-play, 80-yard game-winning drive that saw Indianapolis successfully convert a two-point conversion to seal the game.
“Defensively, we had a few drives there that were good drives,” Mayo said Monday morning in a video conference call. “Obviously, if you take away that last drive – I think it was 17, 18 plays – we’re all feeling a little bit better about the game.”
Mayo had a similar sentiment about his team after losing to the Dolphins, saying, “I think the team has definitely gotten better. You take the Miami game out and look at the last four, we’ve done a lot of good things.” The Patriots defense allowed two 50-yard runs against the Texans in Week 6. After the game, he said, “You take those away and it looks a lot better, but at the same time, that’s what the NFL is. You’ve got to limit those big plays.”
Mayo was asked Monday morning what kind of message it sends to the team to continually ask to remove the worst thing that happened to properly assess the team.
“When I talk to the team, I tell them all the time, I don’t have a crystal ball on what play is going to be important, but you’re exactly right. That’s what the NFL is. The NFL comes down to a few plays, and that’s really my message when I say it,” Mayo said. “It comes down to a few plays. You look at it from one way, if we would have done this, and then you look at it the other way, we didn’t get it done. That’s kind of why we’re here now. We’ve had seven one-score games, and I think we’re 2-5 in those games. We’ve just got to be better. Again, that’s what the NFL is.”
If the Patriots could magically flip those five losses into wins by having specific plays go their way, then yes, they would be 8-5. But it’s not the reality of the situation, and poor performance and coaching have led the team to not execute in those situations.
Mayo appeared on WEEI after his video conference call with reporters and was being asked about some of his fourth-quarter coaching decisions when he posed a question back to the radio hosts.
“If we were losing — look, losing stinks, regardless — if we were losing games by, let’s just say, 21 points a game versus being in the games at the end — and I understand we lost those games, which is better? It’s losing football,” Mayo said.
When asked to clarify if he meant that it doesn’t matter if the Patriots are losing by one score or 21 points, he said that his team is playing a brand of football that allows games to be close at the end.
“We have to be able to control the ball,” Mayo said. “We have to go out there and play fundamentally sound. And I’m not going to say conservative or anything like that, but you’re coaching and also playing to have a chance at the end of the game. Because we know the one score games, like, that’s what the NFL is.”
The combined record of teams that the Patriots have had one-score games against is 34-51. The Seahawks are the only one of those seven teams that currently has a winning record.