Wolf is obviously terrible, but some of the poor decisions on the roster have to be on Mayo and the coaching staff, too. I’d have to think that when discussing resigning Dugger that Wolf talked a lot to Mayo about whether he was worth what it would take to resign him, and how they would use him in the offense, how he was trending as a player, etc. It’s very possible that Dugger’s shortcomings are highly impacted by what else has happened with the team this year or maybe he fell off a cliff, which happens with athletes all the time. But, the simplest explanation is that Wolf and Mayo screwed up.
BTW, was the Onwenu extension also this past offseason? Why aren’t we talking about him, because that hardly seems like a wise one at the moment. Similarly, maybe Onwenu hasn’t been good because of the rest of the line’s failings, but he’s hardly looking like one of the best guards in the league out there.
I think Wolf, like a lot of Pats fans and Kraft, assumed the defense would be in good hands with Mayo and that BB and Steve B weren’t going to be major losses.
There were people here literally making the argument that Mayo is as much of a student of the game as BB and he was the real brains (not Steve) behind the D recently.
I don’t know what, if anything, Mayo does as far as gameplanning or coaching the D but it’s clear that whatever his influence is, and Covington, cannot get the same level of production out of Bill’s “groceries”.
That should have been expected and obvious but given Wolf basically didn’t touch the D externally in the off-season other than bringing in trash (Watts, Hawkins, Takitaki) to replace low end players (Guy, Phillips/Mills, Mack Wilson). It’s clear he thought the players were good regardless of coaching.
Dugger/Peppers being redundant, paying Tavai and extending Godchaux…it’s like they didn’t realize Bb wasn’t around anymore or underestimated both Belichicks’ skill at putting players in position to succeed
Onwenu is weird. They clearly paid him in hopes of being a tackle but abandoned that plan quickly. He looks some combination of out of shape or just sloppy a lot of times. Could be coaching, could be lazy now that he’s paid, could be a product of playing next to trash making him look worse