Little went right for Jerod Mayo during his lone season as head coach of the New England Patriots. 

Beyond the Patriots’ struggles on the field en route to a 4-13 record, Mayo routinely put himself in hot water during his meetings with the media — delivering ill-advised sound bites that often served as distractions in the days leading up to games.

While quotes like “You said it, I didn’t” came back to bite Mayo as he seemingly deflected blame and issued mixed messaging about roster decisions, some of his postgame comments also put his roster in a bad light. 

Along with labeling the Patriots as a “soft football team” after a loss to the Jaguars in London, Mayo also raised some eyebrows after his team committed several penalties in a 34-15 loss to the Dolphins in November. 

“Look, once those guys cross the white lines, there’s nothing I can do for them,” Mayo said. “There’s nothing any coach can do for them once they cross the white line. It’s my job to continue to prepare not only them, but our coaches to go out here and play better football.”

Despite the subsequent discourse surrounding Mayo’s comments, Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez acknowledged this week that Mayo’s postgame sound bites never created discontent within New England’s locker room. 

“(The messaging) gets thrown onto Mayo, but I think that’s more so on the outside, there were a lot of people that don’t understand what he was saying,” Gonzalez said during an interview on NBC Sports Boston’s “Next Pats” podcast. “There’s a lot of things that he said that went viral for him being like — saying he can’t help us win on the field. I mean, he can’t. We’re on the field. We as players are on the field.

“So we understand what he’s saying. Nobody felt disrespected or like, ‘Oh why did he say that?’ So I don’t think it’s nothing that he did. What the coaches did. It comes down to the players. We just didn’t finish games. We didn’t win the games we needed to win. So I think that’s what that is.”

While the Patriots will look to right the ship under Mike Vrabel in 2025, veteran cornerback Jonathan Jones acknowledged that Mayo’s short tenure in Foxborough is a byproduct of the business of the NFL. 

“I just think it’s tough,” Jones told NBC Sports Boston’s Phil Perry. “It’s a cutthroat business, but it’s a results business. The results that we put out there this season as a team, as a unit, it wasn’t good enough. Unfortunately when you’re the leader, you’re the head coach, everything kinda always falls back on you. It was a just tough one.”