Super Bowl champion challenges Patriots players amid 2-7 season

The New England Patriots lost seven of nine games under first-year head coach Jerod Mayo largely because of a noticeable lack of talent. They also repeatedly generated off-the-field headlines over the opening half of the season. 

During the latest edition of the "Patriots Talk Podcast," former New England defensive back and one-time Super Bowl champion Jason McCourty advised current New England players to have Mayo's back in the best way possible. 

"I would urge players, if you like your head coach, and you like the direction your team is going, shut the hell up in the media. Go out there on a Sunday and make plays and ball, and leave all the rest of the stuff to be determined by the front office, coaches and all of that to handle it," McCourty said, as shared by Nick Goss of NBC Sports Boston.

Earlier this fall, somebody within the Patriots seemingly wanted it known the team's locker room was "teetering on mutiny" as Mayo played struggling veteran quarterback Jacoby Brissett over promising rookie Drake Maye. Patriots players later had to react to Mayo saying he felt New England was "a soft football team," and it was subsequently reported that Bill Belichick's replacement had not been "assured of a second season" in charge.

Before McCourty earned his Super Bowl ring, he played on some lackluster teams such as a 2017 Cleveland Browns side that famously went 0–16. Thus, he knows all about what it feels like to be part of a club in the middle of a rebuild. 

"When you're on teams that aren't winning, everybody's looking for any fracture or any crack within the organization to sow dissension, or a coach that doesn't have control over a locker room or anything like that," McCourty explained. "...You're so used to having success and expectation when you hear New England Patriots, that when it's not going your way, sometimes people don't know how to react to adversity because you haven't had to deal with it. But you had to assume that it wasn't going to be smooth sailing of a season."

Mayo needs to start producing wins to at least temporarily silence talk about Patriots owner Robert Kraft possibly going in a different direction come January. As of Wednesday afternoon, DraftKings Sportsbook listed New England as a six-point underdog for this coming Sunday's game at the 4-4 Chicago Bears.