The end of the NFL season means many things. Among them is that the NFL Draft order gets locked into place. And so the New England Patriots, who walked into the day with the No. 1 pick in the Draft, now look at things a little differently.
The Patriots defeated the shorthanded Buffalo Bills on Sunday. Buffalo started Josh Allen for one play and handed the keys to Mitchell Trubisky. New England didn’t play rookie Drake Maye long, but the team still dug in and found a way to win.
The Patriots defeated the Bills 23-16 to move to 4-13 on the season. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Titans lost 23-14 to the Houston Texans, dropping to 3-14. That means Tennessee, not New England, will pick first.
Obviously, the subject of tanking will come up now. Should the Patriots have rolled over so they got the number one pick?
“I’ve said this over the last couple of weeks,” Mayo said via Pro Football Talk. “As a player, as a coach, we always want to go out there and win.”
Evidently, regardless of whether the Patriots would have gotten the top pick or not, Mayo would have wanted his team to play and win. It’s a difficult thing to ask of a team to tank, even when they’re pitiful.
So in other words, it’s a difficult situation to wade through. But Mayo answered the question and faced the situation as well as he could.
Mayo was shockingly fired after the conclusion of Sunday’s game.
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022