Jerod Mayo reveals the hardest part of making the final call on Patriots QB battle

New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo made a big decision following the team's preseason finale, and made it public on Thursday morning.

He revealed who would be the starting quarterback for the team this season.

Here's the answer, along with everything he said in his short press conference:

"Good morning friends.

Just like I told you guys a few days ago, it's a process as far as selecting who the starting quarterback is. We have decided, or I have decided, that Jacoby Brissett will be our starting quarterback this season . Now in saying that, as an organization, we're 100% behind Jacoby. There is no, 'you got a guy right here. You got a guy right there.' We're 100% behind Jacoby.

And I had an opportunity to talk to Drake (Maye), I had an opportunity to talk to Jacoby separately, and also together, and I feel like we're all on the same page from an organizational perspective."

Q. What Ultimately led you to Jacoby Brissett?

"There are a lot of factors that led to this choice. The hard part is thinking in the short term and the long term at the same time. As an organization though, we feel like Jacoby gives us our best chance to win right now."

Q. You said Jacoby will be the starter this season. Does that mean Drake Maye won't play?

"I don't want to get into hypotheticals. We can't go into the season saying he's going to go X amount of weeks. Look as long as Jacoby is going out there and performing the way we all have confidence in him doing, he'll be our quarterback this season."

Immediate Reaction

This was always the right move for the team.

While Drake Maye has shown that he will have a bright future in the NFL, it's clear that the current roster isn't built to help him reach his full potential.

So why risk him getting injured or losing his confidence based on poor play?

The team is being very careful after what happened with Mac Jones and you can't blame them.

However, the only thing about this decision that raises some questions is why did it take so long?

From the spring, Mayo said that Brissett is QB1, but he changed his tone in recent weeks. He started to talk about how it's a much closer battle, and even admitted that Maye has outperformed the veteran in training camp.

But this was always Brissett's job and there didn't seem to be any way he was going to lose it.

It was the right call, but the timing of the decision was off. The team could have been preparing with Brissett all summer, but instead they had to work with two different quarterbacks because nobody knew who was going to take the field first in September.

But the guessing game is now over and they can just focus on the Bengals.