Patriots news
- Thread starter LordSensei1958
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FOXBORO, Mass. — Without realizing it, Drake Maye turned a few heads at his introductory news conference by revealing a change within the New England Patriots that would’ve been unthinkable just a few months ago.
During his first visit to the team’s locker room at Gillette Stadium, he spotted a basketball hoop. Maye played in high school. It made sense that it caught his eye.
But to anyone who has kept up with the Pats, it was a stark change in a transformative era for the team.
A little later, videos surfaced of players riding bikes (linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley later confirmed they were gifts last year) inside the locker room. Under Bill Belichick, such activities were unimaginable. The facility was a place of work and was not for meaningless games or away-from-football activities.
These are small things, of course, but they’re several examples of how new coach Jerod Mayo is trying to bring a different culture and a different way of doing things to the Patriots.
There have been plenty of other decisions that felt, well, very un-Belichickian.
After the team drafted Maye with the No. 3 pick, it kept in contact with its quarterback of the future to key him in on “what they were thinking before they selected” players, Maye said in an interview with WEEI.
That’s not exactly groundbreaking for other franchises in this era of player empowerment — especially for the most important players — but it’s a seismic shift for a Patriots organization that was previously cloaked in secrecy.
The change Mayo represents continued when Maye got to the locker room, where a No. 10 jersey awaited him. Gone are the days when Belichick handed rookies jersey numbers in the 50s and 60s until they earned the better ones they wanted. (Last year’s first-round pick, Christian Gonzalez, joked that he’s “a little sick” this year’s rookies won’t have to pay their dues after he wore No. 50 in training camp last year.)
Maybe none of these changes will end up mattering for the Patriots. They’re still coming off a 4-13 season and have a roster that looks awfully similar to the one from a year ago. Rookies’ jersey numbers and a basketball hoop in the locker room don’t matter as much as who the starting left tackle is. But they are important reminders of how drastically things are changing at 1 Patriot Place.
David Andrews, the most veteran player on the team, admitted he contemplated retirement. He met with Mayo (it’s still odd for him that his former teammate is now his coach) before concluding he’d come back for at least one more year. But for someone who spent a decade with Belichick, the differences have been stark.
“It’s kind of like being part of a new organization — but not,” Andrews said. “It’s still home.”
Mayo may have learned under Belichick, but now that he’s in charge, he’s running things his way.
That includes the signs on the walls. For more than a decade, Patriots players saw the same message when they walked into the stadium: “Do your job.”
It went from a Belichick-ism to a trademarked phrase used to sell T-shirts. It became an idiom synonymous with the Patriots. It was plastered around the stadium. And now it seems to be gone, replaced by Mayo with slogans focused on teamwork.
“Process. Progress. Payoff.” Those are the new three words that greet players at the entrance.
“That’s one right when we walk in the door. It’s big for us,” Bentley said. “Our biggest thing is not only the slogans, but letting them not just be slogans. Everybody has a war cry. Everybody has a slogan they say every day or write down every day, but do you actually live by it?”
When Mayo got the head-coaching job, he talked of the new, more welcoming culture the Patriots would instill. He mentioned knocking down silos within the organization and valuing collaboration.
So it was fitting that when Mayo needed to decide on new slogans for the building, he sought help from his assistant coaches. Alex Van Pelt suggested one that made its way onto the walls: “When we win, we win together.”
The first few weeks for a new NFL coach are a whirlwind, particularly as they realize they’re responsible for more than just football. It often surprises first-time coaches how little time they get to spend actually studying football and brainstorming plays.
So while Mayo spent time reworking the slogans throughout the facility, he’s also stressed to the team that the new slogans alone aren’t going to change things.
“How can we figure out a way each and every day to live by what we’re saying — not just letting it be words?” Bentley said. “So each and every day we’re just constantly looking to get better. Because at the end of the day, the slogans … go far beyond just football. This is life stuff, too — being able to recognize that you’ve got to, each and every day, make progress and enjoy that process. And hopefully at the end of the day, you’re seeing some type of payoff. If you’re not, you go back to the drawing board and start over from scratch. Change what you need to change, but get right back to it.”
The changes go beyond the walls and locker rooms. Mayo and executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf invited scouts and assistants into the draft room as they made their most important selections. They felt it was a sign of respect to those who spent so much time studying prospects and preparing for these picks. That sort of thing didn’t happen under Belichick.
There’s a chance, of course, that none of these moves will make a difference. There will be plenty of other things to talk and write about once the team takes the field for training camp.
But for now, a couple of weeks into May, it’s worth noting just how different things feel at Gillette Stadium.
During his first visit to the team’s locker room at Gillette Stadium, he spotted a basketball hoop. Maye played in high school. It made sense that it caught his eye.
But to anyone who has kept up with the Pats, it was a stark change in a transformative era for the team.
A little later, videos surfaced of players riding bikes (linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley later confirmed they were gifts last year) inside the locker room. Under Bill Belichick, such activities were unimaginable. The facility was a place of work and was not for meaningless games or away-from-football activities.
These are small things, of course, but they’re several examples of how new coach Jerod Mayo is trying to bring a different culture and a different way of doing things to the Patriots.
There have been plenty of other decisions that felt, well, very un-Belichickian.
After the team drafted Maye with the No. 3 pick, it kept in contact with its quarterback of the future to key him in on “what they were thinking before they selected” players, Maye said in an interview with WEEI.
That’s not exactly groundbreaking for other franchises in this era of player empowerment — especially for the most important players — but it’s a seismic shift for a Patriots organization that was previously cloaked in secrecy.
The change Mayo represents continued when Maye got to the locker room, where a No. 10 jersey awaited him. Gone are the days when Belichick handed rookies jersey numbers in the 50s and 60s until they earned the better ones they wanted. (Last year’s first-round pick, Christian Gonzalez, joked that he’s “a little sick” this year’s rookies won’t have to pay their dues after he wore No. 50 in training camp last year.)
Maybe none of these changes will end up mattering for the Patriots. They’re still coming off a 4-13 season and have a roster that looks awfully similar to the one from a year ago. Rookies’ jersey numbers and a basketball hoop in the locker room don’t matter as much as who the starting left tackle is. But they are important reminders of how drastically things are changing at 1 Patriot Place.
David Andrews, the most veteran player on the team, admitted he contemplated retirement. He met with Mayo (it’s still odd for him that his former teammate is now his coach) before concluding he’d come back for at least one more year. But for someone who spent a decade with Belichick, the differences have been stark.
“It’s kind of like being part of a new organization — but not,” Andrews said. “It’s still home.”
Mayo may have learned under Belichick, but now that he’s in charge, he’s running things his way.
That includes the signs on the walls. For more than a decade, Patriots players saw the same message when they walked into the stadium: “Do your job.”
It went from a Belichick-ism to a trademarked phrase used to sell T-shirts. It became an idiom synonymous with the Patriots. It was plastered around the stadium. And now it seems to be gone, replaced by Mayo with slogans focused on teamwork.
“Process. Progress. Payoff.” Those are the new three words that greet players at the entrance.
“That’s one right when we walk in the door. It’s big for us,” Bentley said. “Our biggest thing is not only the slogans, but letting them not just be slogans. Everybody has a war cry. Everybody has a slogan they say every day or write down every day, but do you actually live by it?”
When Mayo got the head-coaching job, he talked of the new, more welcoming culture the Patriots would instill. He mentioned knocking down silos within the organization and valuing collaboration.
So it was fitting that when Mayo needed to decide on new slogans for the building, he sought help from his assistant coaches. Alex Van Pelt suggested one that made its way onto the walls: “When we win, we win together.”
The first few weeks for a new NFL coach are a whirlwind, particularly as they realize they’re responsible for more than just football. It often surprises first-time coaches how little time they get to spend actually studying football and brainstorming plays.
So while Mayo spent time reworking the slogans throughout the facility, he’s also stressed to the team that the new slogans alone aren’t going to change things.
“How can we figure out a way each and every day to live by what we’re saying — not just letting it be words?” Bentley said. “So each and every day we’re just constantly looking to get better. Because at the end of the day, the slogans … go far beyond just football. This is life stuff, too — being able to recognize that you’ve got to, each and every day, make progress and enjoy that process. And hopefully at the end of the day, you’re seeing some type of payoff. If you’re not, you go back to the drawing board and start over from scratch. Change what you need to change, but get right back to it.”
The changes go beyond the walls and locker rooms. Mayo and executive vice president of player personnel Eliot Wolf invited scouts and assistants into the draft room as they made their most important selections. They felt it was a sign of respect to those who spent so much time studying prospects and preparing for these picks. That sort of thing didn’t happen under Belichick.
There’s a chance, of course, that none of these moves will make a difference. There will be plenty of other things to talk and write about once the team takes the field for training camp.
But for now, a couple of weeks into May, it’s worth noting just how different things feel at Gillette Stadium.
HSanders
Cracker bitch
in fairness to maye,mayo isn't the world's best user of words. didn't someone even post a vid here where dev said they hired slater to help mayo with all the goofs he makes speaking?
