Rookie's rebuke suggests Jerod Mayo may have already lost the Patriots’ locker room

The New England Patriots fell to 1-5 with a loss to the Houston Texans last weekend. That is five-straight L's for Jerod Mayo after New England's unexpected Opening Week victory over Cincinnati. The new head coach in Foxboro was not dealt the best hand from a roster standpoint, but it's disappointing to see such galling incompetence across the board already.

It does feel like the culture around this Patriots team is better than it was under late-period Bill Belichick, but it's hard for a completely unestablished head coach to win over a locker room and maintain control over a tense situation. The Pats are losing every week. The vibes aren't great. Players can get disinterested when each practice feels like the precursor to an inevitable defeat.

Mayo does not even have coordinator experience. He's 38, the second-youngest coach in the league. On one hand, he should be easily relatable and motivating as an accomplished former player. But, unfortunately, head coach is a complex and multi-layered gig. Mayo deserves patience, it's just his first season, but the Patriots are spiraling sooner than even we expected.

The death knell for any head coach is when the locker room starts to rebel. We shouldn't jump ahead here, but Patriots rookie Ja'Lynn Polk raised alarm bells with his comments about Mayo this week.

Patriots WR Ja'Lynn Polk disputes scathing comment from Jerod Mayo

Polk netted one of four targets in Sunday's loss for four yards, including a couple costly drops. He was bad, point blank, and after the game Mayo was quick to call out the second-round pick.

The 22-year-old needs to "to get over this mental hump” and “eliminate the dropped passes," Mayo told MassLive. It's a straightforward criticism, and not at all out of bounds. Polk has underperformed to date, primarily due to fixable, youthful errors.

When asked about Mayo's comment, however, Polk did not accept responsibility and vow to improve. Instead, he went directly for the coach's jugular.

"I’m not dealing with [any] mental problems at all. No mental problems, I believe I have the best hands in the league. So, I feel like my drops, that’s not an issue at all."

Yikes.

This reflects far worse on Polk than on Mayo, but it's telling that Mayo's instruction is being so blatantly cast aside by a critical building block in New England's offense. Polk is supposed to develop as Drake Maye's right-hand man. He needs to be able to process his coach's criticism without getting defensive. That sort of bond has not been established with Mayo, evidently.

Time will tell if this issue is isolated to Polk, or if Mayo has already lost the respect of an entire locker room. Again, Mayo deserves patience as he navigates such a young and incomplete roster, but even bad teams need to execute at a certain level. Process is more important than the results for New England at this stage, but the process has not been great.

Hopefully this is a blip on the radar, but it's time to start paying extra attention to the mood in the Patriots locker room after all these losses.