How Patriots Standout Felt About Jerod Mayo’s ‘Soft’ Accusation

Jonathan Jones might not completely agree with the way Jerod Mayo assessed the Patriots on Sunday, but he knows the blunt remark wasn’t baseless.

Mayo called New England a “soft football team” after its 16-point loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, who also entered Week 7 with a 1-5 record. Jones was asked about the comment Monday when he appeared on the “WEEI Afternoon Show.”

“That’s his opinion,” Jones said. “I always take the opinions of what our coaches say to heart. The opposite of a soft team is a tough team and we pride ourselves around here on being able to stop the run, run the ball and cover kicks. If you look at our last game, we didn’t do any of those. So, I don’t think we have any space to call ourselves a tough team based off our last performance. We weren’t able to stop the run, we weren’t able to run the ball and we weren’t able to cover kicks.”

Mayo walked back the remark Monday morning when he clarified the Patriots are “playing soft” rather than lacking toughness. It was a pretty useless backtrack, though, as Mayo will always be at least partly responsible for his players’ effort in every game.

Nonetheless, the first-year head coach isn’t worried about losing the locker room. We’ll see how the Patriots respond to their latest dose of adversity Sunday when they host the rival New York Jets.