Is it beneath Belichick to continue to insinuate downplaying Mayo's coaching? Is this team "soft" or just playing soft
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00:00I had this fear wash over me yesterday. I was driving in my car. I was listening to my guy,
00:06Drake May, do the interview at the afternoon show. I thought Drake sounded great.
00:10He sounded like a leader.
00:12He did a really good job.
00:15You're a great leader, Greg.
00:16Thank you, Curtis.
00:17You're a great, amazing facilitator, Greg, I gotta say. Drake May could learn a thing from you.
00:21Wait a minute. Facilitator?
00:23Sounds like you're calling me a game manager.
00:25No, like what Drake May does. Drake May's big thing he loves
00:29is his high school coach even talked about this. Drake May would look at the box score during
00:33halftime to make sure that everybody on the field was getting targets. He was a great distributor.
00:39You kind of just called Greg Joe Flacco.
00:41Nope, I called him Drake May, who's my favorite person on the planet,
00:44so there you go. It's a great comparison. Either way, I had this fear wash over me yesterday
00:48that Drake May is the next Matthew Stafford in that he is a part of an organization where he
00:55continues to excel, but nothing around him is ever in a place where there is any hope.
01:02They may have one playoff run where they go 11-5 and they get screwed by a bad call that goes in
01:07favor of the Cowboys because the Cowboys' TV market is way bigger than Detroit's, but that
01:12point aside, it just feels like I'm worried that Drake May is entering a hopeless situation.
01:18I really don't want that to be the case. I like Gerard Mayo. I love this team.
01:22I've been a fan of them my entire life, and so I want nothing but Drake May to succeed here,
01:29but I'm getting nervous that that's not going to be the case.
01:33And again, I'm going to be the optimist here. What shows you that this organization,
01:38who must have identified him the same way you have,
01:42is not going to spend and do whatever they can to make him better?
01:47Well, I don't think they identified him the same way I did because if they did,
01:50they would have started him in week one. They would have been more prepared for him to start
01:56right away for this team, and they weren't. They never were. They never made a concerted effort to
02:04make sure he was prepared and everything else around him was going to be stable enough for
02:08him to have success right away. And so I am concerned that they lucked into how good Drake
02:16May is, and they are not prepared or willing to spend and support him in the way that they should.
02:22I think the concern is that Elliot Wolfe is not the guy, and maybe Gerard Mayo is not the guy.
02:32And it's early, I get it, on both of them to say that, but there are a lot of people who feel that
02:38way, Wiggy. Well, I think it's because of maybe some of the things that Mayo say. We won't really
02:42know if they're going to end up in the Detroit way until this offseason. If they don't actively
02:49pursue guys, big name guys in free agency, like really start to put players around them when you
02:55can go, okay, they are trying to do that. I don't believe that they're not going to do that because
03:00there's no way Robert Kraft is just going to allow this to continue, especially after how much
03:06this team is getting criticized, not just here locally, but all over the place.
03:11So there's no way Robert just sits back and goes, all right, don't worry about it. We're
03:14not spending no money to help out Drake May next year. All right, Chime, great lead to get us
03:19started this morning. Hello, Curtis. Hi, Greg. So if you missed it at the beginning of the show,
03:23you can rewind. Greg and I had a good back and forth about Bill's comments yesterday,
03:28attacking, rightfully so, the bad job of Gerard Mayo to start his coaching tenure here.
03:34I would just restate very succinctly that the Patriots were 7th in points allowed in 99.
03:41They went back to 17th in 2000 when Bill Belichick took over. They were 8th in total
03:46yards allowed on defense. They were 20th. And that is a defense with Ty Law, Willie McGinnis,
03:52Teddy Bruschi, Ted Johnson, Lawyer Malloy, Roman Pfeiffer, a very talented defense, a defense
04:00exponentially more talented than this one. And one thing, because if you don't learn from history,
04:06you're doomed to repeat it. I found this yesterday and it's just interesting to
04:10understand where Bill was entering the first home game after the terrorist attacks of 9-11.
04:17There was a conversation with Herman Edwards, who recalled the conversation with Mike Reese,
04:22where he said, I'm walking on the field. I'm talking with him. He's standing right next to
04:26me. I asked how he's doing. He said, quote, we're horrible. We effing stink. He said,
04:32the quarterback is going to get me fired. I know Kraft is going to fire me before the season's out.
04:39So obviously we know what happened that day. We know how everybody changed. We know that Bill
04:44Belichick, before the Super Bowl, made the single greatest coaching decision in my lifetime in
04:50choosing Tom over Drew. And that's both of them created this. I'm not relitigating history.
04:56It's just beneath Bill Belichick. It is. We all know it. Everybody's been saying it for you, Bill,
05:02to go out there and try and kick a guy who, for better or worse, is going to be viewed as someone
05:08you mentored with your son still on the staff. It's just, I don't know, not what I would do.
05:14They've been kicking him repeatedly for months, though, at a certain point.
05:19When Tom Brady won a Super Bowl in Tampa, did he say, F you, New England?
05:23No, no.
05:24Because he did it. You don't need to tell anybody you did it.
05:27Yeah, but they didn't smear Tom Brady when Tom Brady left here. And the whole Bill thing,
05:32I am confused. Wasn't he just asked the question about Mayo and his team?
05:37He controls what they talk about, Wiggy.
05:40He wasn't even asked about Mayo. He was asked about Drake May and then immediately
05:45pivoted in the middle of his answer into Mayo calling the player soft.
05:49Okay. Okay, but is he not right?
05:52Of course he's right. Gerard Mayo's had an awful start.
05:55Gerard Mayo takes a step forward and says this team is soft and then feels the need to come on
06:03this show yesterday and walk it back. Like, I agree with Bill. Like, Bill knows that team,
06:11most of them, better than anybody else, and he doesn't think they're soft. So I, you know.
06:16That's why I was a little concerned when I said that, when I said yesterday, wait a second,
06:20I feel some type of way if my head coach was like, we're soft. I'd be like, hold on, what you
06:24mean we're soft? And then I think he, and then he comes back and he says the way we played in that
06:31game was soft. Okay. All right. Well say that then. You know what I mean?
06:35I don't know. I'm a petty SOB. And I think that it's, some people can only take so much. And
06:43Bill has bit his tongue for months and months and months after Dynasty during the roast on and on.
06:49And they've taken shots at him every chance they get. So for Bill to sit there and be fed up and
06:54just say a little slight comment about how he would handle things and how Gerard handled them.
07:00They did him dirty. Well, who threw the first stone in the whole thing about this whole soft
07:05thing? Wasn't it Mayo last week when, when he was on our show, asked about the roster.
07:11About the roster. I hate to take credit for all this, but I think it was that.
07:14It probably was. I'm serious. That pissed off Lombardi. That pissed off Bill.
07:18Made it seem like that. Well, no, it made it seem like they were using the roster as an excuse.
07:24Yeah. We weren't left with much. But is that true?
07:28What? Was the roster really bad?
07:30No, no. It was virtually the same roster. That went four and 13.
07:35Yeah. And with a quarterback would have gone, you know, with Drake May would have gone.
07:39If the head coach talked to the quarterback, they might've been better. They were four and 13.
07:43But your defense was significantly better last year.
07:47They were. There's no denying that.
07:49Right. They also had Christian Barmore, Matthew Judon. They also had John Bentley,
07:54the middle linebacker.
07:56They lost eight games last season by one score.
07:59Great.
08:00It's completely different than what you saw when you get blown out by the lowly Jaguars.
08:05Nobody's disputing Sunday was a disaster, a debacle. Gerard Mayo has not done a good job.
08:09I'm not defending him. I'm just saying, we're talking about this team. Like they were a playoff
08:14team. They won four games. No, no, no. But the quarterbacks, they lost to Tommy cutlets,
08:19whatever his name was. But the conversation was Sam Ellinger.
08:23The conversation.
08:24Great. Now I have to have cutlets for lunch.
08:25Yum.
08:26The conversation was the defense.
08:28I love a good cutlets.
08:29I prefer sometimes mayo, lettuce, tomato to the, to the gravy and cheese, but go ahead.
08:34The conversation was the defense was far better last year. And you had guys that were
08:40hurt. Judon was hurt. Gonzalez was hurt last year. Who else was hurt? Uh, Jonathan Jones,
08:45wasn't he out for like the whole season?
08:47Ramond Ray was hurt for a bit.
08:48Well, there was a deal. I'm talking defensively. There was a bunch of guys.
08:51So the conversation was this defense. And I thought I was one of the people standing on
08:56the mountaintop saying, oh, this is going to be a top 10 defense. Maybe even top five,
09:01even with Judon being gone because all right, it looks like Keon white might be able to replace
09:05some of that production. This defense might be at the bottom of the league when it comes to,
09:12by the end of the season, last year, your defense was at the top of the league and total yards
09:19and rushing you, you were like, you know, 11th and passing. So you had a far better defense.
09:26And it was because of the quarterback. If Drake makes the quarterback of this football team,
09:31last year, your team is probably a fighting for a player.
09:36That is such a disingenuous argument in defense of bill Belichick, a guy that despised
09:41that position. The reason he despised Mac Jones and Tom Brady.
09:49He despised Mac Jones because of the way Mac Jones went about doing things and did not buy
09:56into the system. He had no, he despised Mac Jones because he was honest about the bad coaching.
10:01Come on. When did the relationship go into the wrong direction? When he, when he went to Dan
10:11Orlovsky and started spilling secrets. No, when he was honest about how Matt Patricia and Joe
10:17judge weren't coaching Dan Orlovsky. Right? Yeah. Bill, you know, that's wrong. Yes, that is wrong.
10:23Okay. It's far more wrong to bring those two guys. We're not comparing.
10:28You asked the question about when Bill and Mac, when that relationship disintegrated,
10:32that was the point, right? Bill has been screwed over and over again by people that he's trusted.
10:39I don't blame Bill one bit for hating Mac Jones for that. Here's how it works. There's no different
10:42than this. There's no different. If you don't like the way the afternoon show was set up
10:48and you then going to people outside that have a little bit of a platform
10:55and then complaining about those people on how bad Mike Thomas is doing his job when it comes to
11:02setting up the afternoon show. I think that is bad business. You got to be, if you are, and you
11:08might not agree with everything, but if you're part of that team and you're part of Bill's,
11:13you know, being under him as a coach, you just don't go bad mouth. Right. It's a respect thing.
11:20Yeah. You say like, all right, I don't agree with Matt Patricia being the offensive guy,
11:24but you know what? I'm going to be a good soldier. I'm going to suck it up and hopefully
11:28Bill will see it. And then guess what he did. He hired Billy O'Brien the next year.