Patriots' power structure complicates looming Drake Maye decision

Devin McCourty said something Sunday night that made my ears perk up.

Talking on NBC’s Football Night in America about the ever-declining play of Deshaun Watson and whether the Browns should go to Jameis Winston, McCourty cited Bill Belichick.

“Bill used to tell us, 'In this league, if you don’t get the results you want, changes will be made,'" McCourty said.

Gone but definitely not forgotten, Belichick’s mantras still ring loudly in the ears of McCourty, this region and -- no doubt -- Jerod Mayo.

Which is why, when I heard McCourty say that hours after the Patriots BUNGLED their way to a 15-10 loss against the Dolphins, I figured, “Timelines be damned … I bet they just can’t keep looking at it with Jacoby Brissett.”

And Monday morning’s Mayo media meetings seemed to indicate a change at quarterback is imminent.

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Will Jacoby Brissett get ONE MORE CHANCE this week against Houston (whose defense absolutely undressed Josh Allen into a 9-for-30-for-131-yards day on Sunday)?

Or will the Patriots pull the plug on the noble but fruitless efforts of Brissett to manage the Patriots offense capably until Drake Maye was ready? The Patriots hired him because he could take care of the ball, take a beating and run Alex Van Pelt’s offense.

At some point, though, guiding the team into the end zone has to enter into that equation.

The horrendous protection, the injuries, the lack of competitive talent at wideout (Tyquan Thornton was mercifully benched on Sunday), the lack of precision route-running and Van Pelt’s insistence on driving the offense 24 mph with his hands at 10-and-2 through a rockslide have all conspired against Brissett.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. The Patriots can’t let Jesus take the wheel. He’s busy all over the planet. So, judging by Mayo’s video conference comments, it looks like Maye is about to come early.

“It just wasn’t good enough,” Mayo said of Brissett’s performance. “I thought we played well enough defensively and on special teams to win the football game. Look, as the quarterback -- and he understands this -- he touches the ball on every single play, and we didn’t win the game or score enough points to win the game. I think he would echo that same sentiment that it wasn’t good enough.”

If the team goes to Maye this early while in a 19-day free-fall since its loss to the Jets (seems longer), there are obvious questions: “What about the plan? What about developing the kid? What about the damage that can be done, the cautionary tales of we’ve all seen when a kid’s support system is non-existent or disappears? Isn’t this a panic move? Is everyone seeing the situation through the same set of eyes (to borrow a Mayo-ism)?"

It’s been said by Mike Tyson and Bill Parcells that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Additionally, why do we even know about the concept of a Plan B? Because Plan A doesn’t always work. Is it time to abandon The Plan?

Or are the Patriots, having been punched in the mouth, freaking out at the first sight of blood instead of holding their water?

This is where these "Triangle of Authority" setups get hairy and are hard to manage. A quick lesson in local history:

After four successful but stressful seasons under the autocratic Bill Parcells, Robert Kraft decided in 1997 he didn’t love consolidated power. So when Parcells weaseled his way to the Jets, Kraft hired defensive-minded Pete Carroll to run the football team, Bobby Grier would run personnel, Andy Wasynczuk would run the cap and business side. Ownership would have more of a voice, but the idea was checks-and-balances and shared visions, etc.

The very talented team got progressively worse over a three-year stretch and -- naturally -- there was plenty of blame to go around and no shortage of finger-pointing.

In 2000, power again was consolidated under Bill Belichick. He took a roster that was MILES more talented than the one he left behind in 2024, honed it, installed a culture and the good times rolled for a couple decades.

Until they didn’t. So when Belichick was extracted in January (a year earlier than anyone planned thanks to a horrendous 2023), Kraft’s instincts were to see if the guys Bill stifled were good at their jobs.

Re-enter the Triangle of Authority.

Personnel guys Eliot Wolf and Matt Groh got to stay. Mayo got elevated. Alex Van Pelt was brought in to return stability to an offense that was a punchline for two years. Mayo deferred to Van Pelt’s vision for the offense, which is fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. There’s a process. Don’t shortchange it. You’ll pay for it later.

Then there’s Wolf, who’s on record saying how important it is to see a young quarterback like Maye develop.

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Meanwhile, the head of the football team is watching his offense get its head handed to it on a weekly basis. With a big, athletic, tough, rifle-armed but very raw third-overall pick just sitting there in all his, “Aw shucks” drawling glory watching the chaos.

Mayo, Wolf and Van Pelt -- these aren’t guys who all came up together. They’re kind of thrown together. Sprinkle in Van Pelt’s trusted offensive line coach, Scott Peters, quarterbacks coach T.C. McCartney and Ben McAdoo doing whatever it is he does in his role.

Van Pelt was hired before Brissett came in as a free agent, but there’s no doubt the “happily ever after” included Van Pelt installing his offense with the tough, smart, accurate Brissett running it and Maye developing slowly while the Patriots shocked the world and challenged for a Wild Card.

Five weeks in, it’s sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Oh, and Jabrill Peppers got arrested.

Oh, and we found out about it a day after the Patriots -- with six of their most important players (David Andrews, Christian Barmore, Peppers, Kyle Dugger, Ja’Whaun Bentley) out of the game or out for the season -- committed 12 penalties for 104 yards and peed away the opportunity for a galvanizing win with dumb mistake after bad decision.

If you don’t think the on-field product was just as bad the last couple years, I direct your attention to (deep breath) the Monday night Bears loss in 2022, the Raiders loss that same year, a 38-3 to the Cowboys, a 34-0 loss to the Saints (back-to-back), the Germany loss to the Colts, losing 10-6 to Tommy DeVito and the Giants and a 6-0 loss to the Chargers.

So it was every bit as bad. Just not as unstable.

With Belichick running everything, you knew where the buck stopped, where blame would lay and could at least predict how he’d attempt to extract the team from the problems.

Now? There’s no backlog of information telling us how anyone will react to this level of adversity.  

The Patriots are adrift after five weeks. The weather’s started getting rough (the tiny ship is tossed).

Mayo was asked LAST week how he approached the job with everything falling in on him.

“You can look around the league and look at what we would call established coaches at this current time,” he said. “But there was a time in their career early on where they probably were getting killed, too. I think about Dan Campbell, I think about [Kyle] Shanahan, I think about all those guys that had to weather the storm, and that's what we'll do.

“It starts with me; I'll weather the storm,” he added. “You can write whatever you want. That's your job, and I understand it. I used to work in media. I understand that you guys have a job to do. I ignore the noise, and my responsibility is to put a winning team together, not only for now, but also in the future.”